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Braised Spare Ribs

Braised spare ribs cooked with brown stock, onion, sage, celery, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Braised Spare Ribs

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 and brown

  1. Cut the spare ribs into portions by cutting between every other rib.

  2. Place the ribs in a roasting pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nicely browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Make a gravy by adding the brown stock, minced onion, sage, celery, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sage + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spare ribs
Provide the main meat, which browns in the oven to develop rich savory flavor.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding moisture and savory depth.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy, balancing its savory notes.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the ribs in the oven. Ribs that are not browned well stay pale and taste flat, because browning comes from the Maillard reaction between surface proteins and sugars at high heat. Cook until the surfaces are deep golden, not just heated through.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, ketchup, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, ketchup, sauce. 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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