No. 1331

Ribs of Beef of Thirty-Two Pounds, American Style

Cotes de Boeuf de trente deux livres, a l'Americaine

These ribs lay next to the short loin, on the side near the neck; in veal and mutton this part is called the rack; the ribs are the most desirable part of the beef, and are either roasted or braised. Choose the ribs from a tender, well mortified piece of meat, saw off the projecting part of the spine. To roast on the spit, it must be wrapped up or packed in several sheets of strong, greased paper; tie with several turns of string, lay it in a cradle spit (Fig. 116) to cook, which will take about three hours and a half before a good, regular fire. Half an hour before removing from the spit, remove the paper, let brown nicely, then put it on a heater to keep warm for forty-five minutes before serving. To roast in the oven, place the ribs in a baking pan, pour on some fat, and roast it for four hours, carefully basting several times during the cooking; salt and set it on a heater to keep warm three-quarters of an hour before serving. When sending the roast to table serve with it a sauce-bowl of good thickened gravy (No. 405) and a dish of mellow potatoes, prepared as follows: Cook some potatoes in salted water for thirty minutes, drain and press them through a colander, adding half an ounce of butter for each pound of potatoes. Form this puree into balls an inch and a half in diameter, lay them on a buttered pan, pour over some more butter, and brown them in the oven. Serve them at the same time as the roast beef. The time for cooking different sizes is: For a cut of five pounds, forty minutes, then keep in hot closet for fifteen minutes longer; for a cut of ten pounds one hour, keep in hot twenty minutes; for a cut of fifteen pound one hour and three-quarters, keep in hot closet twenty-five minutes; for a cut of twenty pounds, two hours and one-quarter, then keep in a hot closet thirty minutes; for twenty-five pounds, two hours and a half, then keep in a hot closet thirty-five minutes; for a cut of thirty pounds, three hours, then keep in a hot closet forty minutes.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a whole rib primal for a banquet table, cooked either on a cradle spit before an open fire or in the oven. The scaling table at the end is the useful part for a home cook, but it assumes an oven hotter than most people roast beef in today and gives no internal temperatures at all.

The hinge: use a thermometer, not the clockThe timings here work out to roughly 6-8 minutes per pound, which is fast even for a hot oven, and rib roasts vary enormously in thickness and bone structure. Pull at 120-125F in the centre for rare, 130F for medium-rare; the long rest will carry it up another 5-10F.
"Well mortified"A literal translation of the French mortifie, meaning hung until the meat has relaxed and begun to age; broadly the territory of modern dry-aged beef.
Oven heatNo oven temperature is given. For the oven method, 425F for the first 20-30 minutes to set the crust and then 325F for the remainder is a workable modern approach, though it will take longer than the times tabulated here.
The "hot closet" is a rest, and it is not optionalForty-five minutes sounds extreme by modern habit, but a 30 lb roast holds heat for hours and needs that long for the juices to redistribute. Tent loosely with foil in a warm spot; for a 5-8 lb domestic roast, 20-30 minutes is the equivalent.
Size in a real kitchenThirty-two pounds of ribs is a whole seven-bone primal and then some, and will not fit in a domestic oven. The table's five-, ten- and fifteen-pound entries are the practical ones; a three- or four-rib roast of 8-10 lb serves 8 to 10 generously.
The paper wrappingThe greased paper on the spit is a heat shield against direct radiant fire, removed at the end so the surface can brown. It has no function in an oven roast; skip it and rely on basting, as the second method does.
Sauce No. 405The cross-reference is Ranhofer's thickened gravy. Pan drippings deglazed with stock and lightly thickened stand in for it without apology.
Mellow potatoesPlain riced potato with 1/2 oz (1 tablespoon) butter per pound, shaped into 1 1/2-inch balls and browned. The puree must be stiff and dry or the balls will slump; press the potatoes while hot and let the steam escape before adding butter. Browning takes roughly 15-20 minutes in a hot oven.
Sawing the spineAsk the butcher to remove the protruding chine bone and, if you want easier carving, to cut the ribs free and tie them back on.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summation of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its scale reflects that: a thirty-two pound rib was a serving piece for a large private dining room. The label a l'Americaine is doing real work here, though what exactly it denotes is not spelled out. Ranhofer was a French-trained chef cataloguing French method for an American house, and it is tempting to read the American note in the sheer size of the cut and the insistence on well-hung beef roasted plainly and served with gravy and potatoes rather than dressed up one hazard a guess only, since the neighbouring recipes for ribs a l'Hindostan and "Old Style" are not described in any detail. The cradle spit he illustrates was arguably already becoming a period piece by the 1890s, and he gives the oven method alongside it; the "hot closet" was a warming compartment beside or above the range, standard equipment in a professional kitchen of the era and the reason such long rests were practical at all.