Skip to main content
Main

A Bacon Spare Rib

A roast spare rib coated with flour, butter, and sage, cooked slowly in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

A Bacon 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).

  2. Place the thick end of the spare rib nearest to the fire.

  3. Dust the meat with flour and baste with butter when you start roasting.

  4. Rub the dried sage leaves through a sieve and place in a pepper box.

Roast

  1. Roast for 2 to 3 hours, depending on thickness.

  2. About 15 minutes before the meat is done, baste again with butter and sprinkle with sage.

Finish

  1. Avoid pouring gravy over the roast to keep it flavorful.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Bacon spare-rib
Its fat and connective tissue soften during a long roast, keeping the meat moist and tender.
Butter
Basting adds moisture and fat, helping the surface brown and taste rich.
Flour
A light dusting helps the outside brown and form a slightly crisp crust.
Dried sage leaves
Adds a savory, aromatic herb flavor to the outside of the meat.

The step that matters

Avoid pouring gravy over the roast. Pouring liquid over the roast cools the surface and softens the browned crust built up during roasting. Keeping the outside dry preserves its texture and flavor.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes