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Roast Spare Ribs

A roasted spare rib served with a glaze and optional fillings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Spare Ribs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Roast the rib

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the spare rib in a baking pan and add 1 cup of salted hot water.

  3. Baste the rib constantly until cooked through.

  4. Once done, transfer the rib to a hot platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off the drippings, then add 1 cup of hot water to the pan and bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the mixture with browned flour and season to taste.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of finely chopped cucumber pickle before serving.

Serve

  1. For added flavor, sprinkle powdered sage over the rib before roasting.

  2. Optionally, break the ribs in half, fill with force-meat or dressing, and fold them back together.

  3. Serve with stewed apple.

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 + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cucumber + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cucumbertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + appletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

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 is roasted and served as the centerpiece of the dish.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan liquid into a gravy as it cooks.
Force-meat or dressing
Adds a stuffing filling when the ribs are split and folded back together.

The step that matters

Basting the rib constantly. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and carries pan juices back over the meat, helping it stay juicy and browning evenly while it cooks through.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cucumber, meat, apple):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cucumber, meat, apple. 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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