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Spare Rib

A roasted spare rib seasoned with butter, flour, gage, and optional sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spare Rib

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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Roast

  1. Roast the spare rib for 2.5 hours, or 3 hours if it is very large.

  2. Baste the rib with butter while roasting.

  3. Dredge the rib with flour.

  4. Pound some gage and sprinkle it on the rib about 20 minutes before it is done.

  5. Add a pinch of coarse sea salt if desired.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + plumtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together710 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + plumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Is the main cut of meat that the whole dish is built around.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and stay moist while roasting.
Flour
Coats the rib, helping the outside brown and form a light crust.
Gage (plum)
Adds sweet-tart fruit flavour to the rib's surface during the final stretch of roasting.

The step that matters

Pound the gage and add it near the end. Adding the plum about 20 minutes before the rib is done keeps its fresh, tart flavour from cooking away, while the sugars in the fruit can darken quickly if left too long in the oven.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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