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Sparerib Pie

A baked pie with spareribs and a biscuit crust, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sparerib Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the small pieces of meat and place them in a pudding or bread tin.

  2. Add some gravy and a little water to the meat.

Make and add the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and butter or shortening to make a biscuit crust.

  2. Roll the crust to ½ inch thick and place it over the top of the meat.

  3. Alternatively, cut the crust into biscuits and place them close together on top of the meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is golden brown.

  2. Serve with cream gravy or leftover gravy from the ribs.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuit crust once mixed and baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the crust rises and becomes light.
Butter or shortening
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and helps it brown.
Small pieces of meat (spareribs)
Provides the main filling, becoming tender as it cooks under the crust.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden brown. Baking long enough sets the crust and browns its surface, while the filling cooks through underneath. Pulling it early leaves raw dough or a pale, gummy crust.

“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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