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Spare Rib, Stuffed

A spare rib stuffed with a mixture of cooked sour apples, prunes, sugar, and anise seed, then roasted with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spare Rib, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the spare rib in cold water and dry it.

  2. Crack the bones in the middle with a hatchet, but do not cut through.

  3. Fold the edges together, trim the ends, and sew it up with a small cord, leaving one end open.

  4. In a bowl, mix the cooked sour apples and prunes with sugar and anise seed.

  5. Fill the rib with the mixture and sew it closed.

  6. Season the outside with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour.

Roast

  1. In a roasting pan, melt the butter and add water, then place the spare rib inside.

  2. Brown the rib on both sides, basting often with hot water.

  3. Cook in a closed oven at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  4. After cooking, cut the cord and remove it.

  5. Add hot water to the gravy, stir well, and let it boil for a few minutes.

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. Anise + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Anise + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + anisetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spare rib
Forms the main body of the dish and holds the filling while it cooks.
Cooked sour apples
Add tartness and moisture that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Cooked prunes
Add sweetness and moisture to the filling as it cooks inside the meat.
Flour
Dusted on the outside to help the surface brown during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan and helps the outside brown.

The step that matters

Browning the rib on both sides. Searing the outside builds colour and flavour through browning, and basting keeps the surface from drying out during the long roast.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, anise, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

“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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