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Beef, Ribs of, Rolled
Take five or six pounds of ribs. Bone the meat and roll it round tightly. Secure it with tapes, and hang it up in front of a clear fire, or bake it in a good oven. Cook it carefully so that it is thoroughly done throughout, and baste it continually the whole time. Pour the fat from the dripping-pan, sprinkle a little salt, and pour about a quarter of a pint of boiling water into it. Strain this round the meat, and serve garnished with scraped horse-radish. Probable cost, 5s.
A boned and rolled rib roast, written for a household that still had a spit-hook and an open fire. The oven version works perfectly well, but the instructions assume a joint cooked far past what most cooks want today.
- Ask the butcher to bone itFive or six pounds of ribs will bone out to roughly four to five pounds of meat. A butcher will bone, roll and tie it quickly; if you do it yourself, keep the bones for stock and roll the joint with the fat layer outward.
- TapesCotton tape was the Victorian binding for rolled joints. Use butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals instead — tape chars and can stick to the crust.
- "A good oven"The book gives no temperature, so any figure is a modern working equivalent: about 425F for the first 20 minutes to set the outside, then 350F for the remainder. A rolled joint is a solid cylinder, thicker through the middle than a bone-in rib, so allow more time per pound.
- "Thoroughly done throughout"This reflects the period's preference, not food safety. A whole beef roast is safe at 145F internal with a three-minute rest; 130-135F gives medium-rare. Cook by thermometer at the centre of the roll, not by the clock — figure roughly 20-25 minutes per pound at 350F as a first estimate only.
- Continual bastingNecessary in front of a fire, where the exposed side dries. In a closed oven it is largely unproductive and each door-opening drops the temperature. Baste two or three times at most, or not at all.
- The gravyA quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, a scant two-thirds of a US cup. Pour off the fat, salt the browned residue, add the boiling water and scrape the pan hard — this is a thin deglazed jus, not a thickened gravy, and it should be strained around the meat rather than over it.
- RestingThe original says nothing about it. A rolled joint of this size needs 15-20 minutes loosely covered before carving, or the juices run out onto the board.
- Horseradish"Scraped" means shaved into fine shreds with a knife and served plain, without cream or vinegar. Fresh root is sharper and more volatile than the jarred kind; scrape it just before serving.
- Yield and costServes six to eight, with perhaps a little left over for cold slices. Five shillings was a real outlay for a family joint at the time -- this is Sunday dinner, not a weeknight.
Cassell's gives two cooking methods in one breath — hanging the joint before a clear fire, or baking it in the oven — which places the book squarely at the moment when the closed cast-iron range was displacing the open hearth in British kitchens. Roasting properly meant radiant heat from a fire, with the joint turned on a jack or a bottle-jack and a dripping-pan beneath; what came out of an oven was, strictly speaking, baked. Boning and rolling the ribs was partly economy and partly convenience: it made a joint that carved into neat round slices with no bones to negotiate, suited the cold-meat suppers that followed the Sunday roast, and left the rib bones for the stockpot. Horseradish with beef is an English pairing of long standing, recorded well before this book, and here it is served merely scraped rather than in a sauce.