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Roast Spare Ribs

A roast spare rib dish seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and bread dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Roast Spare Ribs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the ribs

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub coarse sea salt, black pepper, and flour into the spare ribs.

Roast and finish

  1. Roast the ribs in the oven until nearly done.

  2. Cover the ribs with well-seasoned bread dressing.

  3. Return to the oven and roast until browned.

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 + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Spare ribs
The main cut, which renders fat and becomes tender as it roasts.
Flour
Dry coating on the meat that helps the surface brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Return to the oven and roast until browned. Browning comes from sugars and proteins reacting at high oven heat. Too little time leaves the surface pale, while too long dries the ribs and can scorch the coating.

“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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