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Spare Rib

A roasted spare rib coated in flour, bread crumbs, sage, onion, pepper, and sea salt, finished with butter and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Spare Rib

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

  1. Cover the spare ribs with greased paper until half roasted.

  2. Remove the paper and dredge the ribs with flour.

  3. Baste with its own gravy after a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, sprinkle the surface with seasoned bread crumbs, sage, chopped onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes and baste again with butter.

  3. Skim the gravy, pour in ½ cup of boiling water, thicken with flour, season, and pour over the meat.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 ribs
The main cut of meat that the whole dish is built around.
Flour
Dredging the ribs and thickening the gravy so it coats the meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a seasoned crust on the surface of the ribs.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when basting, helping the surface brown and taste rich.
Onion, finely chopped
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the crumb topping.

The step that matters

Skimming the gravy before adding water. Skimming removes excess fat from the pan juices, so the gravy stays clean-tasting and does not turn greasy when thickened with flour and poured over the meat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, sage, pepper, 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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