No. 1800

Rack of Pork with Stuffed Peppers

Carre de Porc aux Piments Farcis

Obtain a rack of pork containing eight ribs with the breast; remove the chine bone, and saw it off at the beginning of the ribs, bone also the breast leaving on only two and a half inches of the ribs; remove the fat all but a quarter of an inch and score into lozenges. Roll over the flap, tie and set the meat in a china dish, season with salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaf, parsley and round slices of onion, pouring over some sweet oil and lemon juice. Wrap the rack and its marinade in several sheets of buttered paper, lay it in baking pan, besprinkle with fat and cook it in a sufficiently hot oven for one hour. Twenty minutes before serving unwrap and leave the meat in the oven to brown and glaze to a fine color. Place the vegetables in a saucepan with some espagnole sauce (No. 414) and white wine; skim off the fat and reduce. Dress the rack, surround it with stuffed peppers (No. 2768), and pour some of the sauce over, serving the remainder at the same time but separately.

← No. 1799 Rack of Pork on the Spit Pork No. 1801 Sausages Chipolata →

For the Modern Kitchen

An eight-rib rack, marinated and then roasted enclosed in buttered paper so it steams in its own aromatics before being unwrapped to brown. The technique is sound; the timing is the part that needs attention.

The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockOne hour may not carry an eight-rib rack through, even at a brisk heat. Roast until the centre of the loin reads 145F on an instant-read thermometer, then rest 15 minutes; note that the recipe is ambiguous as to whether the final twenty minutes unwrapped fall within the hour or extend beyond it.
"A sufficiently hot oven"The book does not define this; something in the region of 400-425F suits the dish. Wrapped in paper the meat is effectively braise-roasting, so the higher figure does no harm, and the final unwrapped stretch benefits from it.
Butchery in plain termsYou want a bone-in centre-cut pork loin roast, chine bone removed so it carves between the ribs, ribs frenched to about two and a half inches, and the belly flap left attached to roll over the eye and be tied. Any butcher will do this if asked; supermarket racks usually arrive already chined.
Sweet oilOlive oil, in the mild refined grade sold for cooking rather than a peppery finishing oil. The marinade is oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, thyme, bay, parsley and sliced onion, and an hour or two at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator both work.
The china dishProbably specified because a lemon-juice marinade reacts with iron and other bare metals. Glass, glazed ceramic or stainless steel serve the same purpose.
Buttered paperParchment, buttered on the side that touches the meat, in two or three overlapping sheets tied or folded closed. Foil will do the job but reflects heat and gives a paler surface; if you use it, allow a little longer unwrapped at the end.
The sauceEspagnole (No. 414) is a long-simmered brown sauce built on veal stock and browned roux and takes hours to make properly. A well-reduced brown veal or pork stock, lightly thickened, carries the dish. Deglaze the roasting pan, add the marinade vegetables and white wine, skim thoroughly and reduce until it coats a spoon.
YieldEight ribs serve six to eight, carved one or two bones apiece. Ranhofer's stuffed peppers (No. 2768) can be replaced by any rice-and-forcemeat pepper; they are a garnish, not a structural part of the roast.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that kitchen: some twelve hundred pages of cross-referenced numbered recipes intended to be read by cooks who already knew the trade, which is why No. 1800 sends you off to No. 414 and No. 2768 rather than repeating itself.