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Stewed Stuffed Ribs of Pork
Select a young loin of pork and joint the bone; peel, core, and cut into quarters enough cooking apples, and stuff the pork with them, trussing it so as to keep them in securely; lay the meat on a baking dish, baste with a few tablespoonfuls of warmed butter, and bake in a brisk oven until lightly browned all over. Then lay the meat in a stewpan, pouring in a breakfast cupful of clear, boiling broth over it, put on the lid, and keep it at the side of the fire, stewing slowly for a little more than two hours, basting the meat frequently, and adding a little water from time to time, as it becomes reduced by the boiling. When the meat is done place it in a hot dish, skim off the fat from the cooking liquor, and strain through a fine hair sieve over the pork.
A two-stage braise: browned dry in a hot oven, then stewed slowly in broth with an apple stuffing packed into the rib bones. A few of the directions assume a coal range and a butcher who works to order.
- "Joint the bone" is a butcher's jobAsk for a bone-in pork loin rib roast with the chine bone cracked between each rib, so it carves cleanly and can be tied around the filling. The recipe gives no size; a rack of six or seven ribs answers well enough.
- A brisk ovenRoughly 400-425F. This stage is only for color -- until the fat cap and edges brown, not until the meat is cooked.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Use a generous cup of broth to start, and top up with water as the recipe says.
- "At the side of the fire"The cool zone of a coal range: a bare simmer, never a boil. On a modern stove that is the lowest burner setting with a heavy lid, or a covered pot in a 300-325F oven, which holds the temperature more evenly.
- The applesUse a firm cooking apple that holds its shape, such as Granny Smith or Braeburn. Bramley, and softer dessert apples, collapse to sauce over two hours and leak out of the trussing.
- Truss properlyThe apple quarters sit against the cut bone ends and will fall out once the meat relaxes. Tie between every pair of ribs with butcher's twine before the first browning.
- Two hours, and donenessLoin is lean and this is a long braise; check at 90 minutes. The meat is done when a skewer meets no resistance. Pork is safe at 145F, but a bone-in rack braised this way is usually taken further, to about 175F, for the connective tissue to give.
- Hair sieve, and the sauceAny fine-mesh strainer will do. After skimming, the cooking liquor is thin -- boil it down hard by half before straining it over the meat, or it will simply pool in the dish.
- YieldA loin of six or seven ribs serves about six, one rib each, with the skimmed and strained cooking liquor poured over as the sauce.
Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, put his name to *The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf* in 1896, a sprawling volume that mixed hotel dishes with the plain domestic cooking of the period -- which is what this is. Pork with apple is one of the oldest of European pairings, the fruit's acidity cutting fat that older, fattier hog breeds had in quantity; here the stuffing goes directly into the jointed rib bones rather than being served as a separate sauce. The two-stage method here, dry heat for browning followed by a slow covered stew, is a braise in all but name, and the direction to keep the pot "at the side of the fire" marks a period style rather than fixing a date: such language belongs to a solid-fuel range, where cooks controlled heat by moving the pot rather than turning a dial, though it persisted in print for decades after ranges themselves changed.