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Beef, Ribs of, to Roast
The best piece to roast is the fore-rib, and it should be hung for two or three days before being cooked. The ends of the ribs should be sawn off, the outside fat fastened with skewers, and the strong sinew and chine bones removed. The joint should first be placed near the fire, and after a short time it should be drawn back and roasted steadily. Baste freely with clarified dripping at first, as there will not be sufficient gravy when first put down; keep basting at intervals of ten minutes till done. Care must be taken not to allow it to burn, as it is very easily spoiled. Serve with horse-radish sauce. Probable cost, 10d. to 1s. per pound.
This is a spit-roast set beside an open fire, translated into an oven with very little loss. The essential points are the cut, the heat pattern and a thermometer, which the original cook did not have.
- What the fore-rib isThe fore-rib is the standing rib roast sold in the US as prime rib, cut from the ribs behind the chuck. Ask for it bone-in, chine bone sawn through or removed, and the feather bones and thick gristle trimmed — the butcher does in a minute what the recipe asks you to do with a saw.
- HangingDo not hang beef for two or three days in a modern kitchen; the cool, airy larder that made this safe no longer exists in most homes. Buy meat that has been dry- or wet-aged at the butcher, which is what the instruction is really asking for.
- The two-stage heat"Placed near the fire, then drawn back" is a sear followed by steady roasting. In an oven: 450F for 20 minutes to colour the fat cap, then down to 325F for the remainder. The reverse order — 250F until nearly done, then a short blast at 500F — gives a more evenly pink interior if you prefer it.
- Timing and temperatureReckon roughly 15 minutes per pound at 325F after the initial sear, but cook to temperature, not to the clock. Pull at 120-125F for rare, 130-135F for medium rare; the USDA recommendation for whole cuts of beef is 145F followed by a three-minute rest, which will give you a firm medium.
- BastingClarified dripping is beef fat with the water and meat sediment removed, so it is less likely to spit or scorch. Basting every ten minutes is more work than the result justifies — it repeatedly drops the oven temperature — but it does help brown a lean fat cap. Once the joint renders its own fat, basting with that is enough.
- "Easily spoiled"The warning is about the fat and the exposed rib ends burning before the centre is done. If the ends darken too fast, cap them with foil rather than lowering the whole oven.
- RestingGive it 20 to 30 minutes loosely tented; a large rib roast will climb another 5-10F as it rests, so factor that into when you pull it.
- YieldAllow about 12 oz bone-in per person, or roughly two servings per rib. A three-rib joint feeds six comfortably.
- CostTenpence to a shilling a pound places this among the more expensive meats in a Victorian household budget, well above the cheap stewing cuts.
Roast beef with horseradish had been the emblematic English dinner for well over a century by the time Cassell's was compiled, and the fore-rib was its aristocratic form — sold by the rib, carved at table, and priced accordingly. The method described here belongs to the open hearth: the joint turns on a spit or a bottle-jack before a bank of coals, close in at first to set the surface, then drawn back to finish by radiant heat, with a dripping pan below catching the fat that both bastes the meat and later fries the household's potatoes. Roasting a rib was treated as a foundational skill, the test of whether a cook could manage a fire. The horseradish is not incidental: the root was long grown in English kitchen gardens and its sharpness was held to cut the richness of the fat, a pairing generally traced back to the seventeenth century in English usage.