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PORK, SPARE-RIB OF, ROASTED (another way)
Sprinkle a handful of salt over the sparerib, and let it lie for a day or two. When it is to be cooked, brush or wash the salt off, joint the meat neatly, and crack the ribs across. Put it down to a clear and steady, but by no means fierce, fire, or the little meat that there is upon it will be dried up. Dredge a little flour over it, and baste well. About a quarter of an hour before it is done enough, sprinkle a little powdered sage over it, and send brown gravy and apple sauce to table with it. Time, according to the thickness rather than the weight of the joint: say a quarter of an hour per pound, if thin. Probable cost, 10d. per pound.
A spare-rib in this book is the bony rack left after the loin and belly are cut away from a side of pork, and the whole method is built around the fact that there is very little meat on it. Cooked in front of an open fire in the original, it adapts easily to an oven.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe instruction not to use a fierce fire is the whole recipe. A thin, bony rack over high heat loses its small amount of meat to dryness before the bones give up any flavour. Roast at 325-350F rather than the 425F you might use for a loin.
- The two-day saltingA handful of salt left on the meat for a day or two is a light dry cure for flavour and keeping, not a preservation method. Do it uncovered on a rack in the refrigerator, not at room temperature, and rinse and pat dry before roasting as directed.
- "Joint the meat and crack the ribs"Jointing means cutting partway between the ribs so the roast can be carved into single ribs at table; cracking the ribs across is generally taken to mean breaking the bones so the rack sits flat and lies open to the heat. A butcher will do both if asked.
- Fire to ovenThe original assumes a spit or a dangle in front of the fire with a dripping pan below. In an oven, set the rack bone-side down on a rack over a shallow pan so the drippings collect for gravy.
- Timing and donenessA quarter of an hour per pound is about right for a thin rack at moderate heat, but weight is a poor guide here, as the recipe itself concedes. Roast to 145F in the thickest meat away from bone and rest 10 minutes; a large meaty rack may need closer to 20 minutes per pound.
- Dredging and bastingThe flour dredge browns into a thin crust and helps hold the basting fat. Baste every 15-20 minutes with the pan drippings; there is little fat on a spare-rib, so a spoonful of lard or oil to start is not out of keeping.
- Sage at the endDried powdered sage added a quarter of an hour before the end toasts rather than burns. Added at the start it turns acrid and dusty. About a teaspoon over a rack is plenty.
- Cost and yieldThe recipe gives the probable cost as tenpence per pound. A rack of six to eight ribs, roughly 3 lb, will serve three or four, and the brown gravy and apple sauce are doing real work in stretching a joint with little meat on it.
The spare-rib was commonly regarded as one of the cheaper products of the pig: once the loin was cut off for chops and the side salted down for bacon, the framework of ribs remained with only a thin covering of meat. Cassell's gives more than one method for it -- this page is headed "another way" -- which suggests it appeared often enough on modest tables. The pairing with sage and apple sauce is the standard English treatment of fresh pork, sage being traditionally held to cut the richness of the meat. Note also the brief dry-salting at the start, in keeping with a period when salt was the ordinary means of holding meat for a few days before it was cooked.