Name: Spare Rib of Pork
Ingredients: Spare rib of pork; Flour; Powdered sage; Butter; Apple sauce; Lemon; Sugar

Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spare Rib of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Rub flour over the rind of the pork.
Roast the pork before a clear fire, not too strong, or cover it with paper.
About 10 minutes before it's done, sprinkle powdered sage over it.
Froth butter in a spoon and apply it to the pork.
Baste the pork with its own gravy while roasting.
When done, skim the fat from the gravy and thicken it with a little flour.
Serve the pork with gravy in a boat and a deep dish of thick apple sauce flavored with lemon and sweetened well.

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.

Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, sage, butter, sauce, lemon, sugar):

Limefits about as well
Raisinfits about as well
Avocadofits about as well
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, sage, butter, sauce, lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.