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Spare Ribs

A boiled and grilled spare rib dish seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, butter, and browned cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Spare Ribs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut the spare ribs into pieces of two or three ribs each.

  2. Place them in a covered pot with a small amount of water and boil for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and minced parsley just before removing from heat.

Scorch and serve

  1. Drain and dry the ribs, then scorch them on a grill over hot coals.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish, butter each piece, and sprinkle with browned cracker crumbs before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spare ribs
Provide the main meat; boiling first tenderises them before the grill finish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to each piece as it is served.
Browned cracker crumbs
Add a toasted, crunchy topping that contrasts with the tender meat.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the ribs before scorching. Surface water must evaporate before the ribs hit the hot grill, otherwise they steam instead of browning and developing flavour.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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