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BACON SPARE-RIB
1 spare-rib of pork
Flour
Butter
Sage leaves, powdered
Pepper
A bacon spare-rib usually weighs about eight or nine pounds, and
will take from two to three hours to roast it thoroughly; not
exactly according to its weight, but the thickness of the meat upon
it, which varies very much. Lay the thick end nearest to the fire.
A proper bald spare-rib of eight pounds weight (so called because
almost all the meat is pared off), with a steady fire, will be done
in an hour and a quarter. There is so little meat on a bald
spare-rib, that if you have a large, fierce fire, it will be burned
before it is warm through. Joint it nicely, and crack the ribs
across as you do ribs of lamb.
When you put it down to roast, dust on some flour, and baste it with
a little butter; dry a dozen sage leaves, and rub them through a
hair-sieve, and put them into the top of a pepper-box; and about a
quarter of an hour before the meat is done, baste it with butter;
dust the pulverized sage over it.
--Make it a general rule never to pour gravy over any thing that is
roasted; by so doing, the dredging, &c., is washed off, and it eats
insipid.
The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829
Comment: This recipe clearly dates to the days of cooking over a
kitchen hearth, essentially a large open fireplace. A whole range of
implements, usually of cast iron, were required to hold the food in
place, keep it the proper distance from the heat at each stage of
cooking, and also to rotate it in such a way as to expose all
surfaces of the meat to the flames. The technique of "dredging" is
almost universal with hearth-roasted meats but we (never having
tried it) are unsure as to exactly how it works--it would seem that
the fat and other juices dripping off the roast would carry the
dredging material, be it flour or spices, off into the drip pan with
it. If we ever get a house big enough to hold a fireplace big enough
to try this in, we'll let you know. But however you do it, may your
roasts never be insipid!
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