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Roast Spare Ribs

Roast spare ribs seasoned with salt, pepper, and bread dressing, baked until brown and served with cranberry or apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Roast Spare Ribs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Trim off the rough ends of the spare ribs.

  2. Crack the ribs across the center with a hatchet.

  3. Rub the ribs with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Fold and stuff the ribs with bread dressing seasoned with onion, sage, salt, and pepper to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay the ribs on a wire rack in a baking pan.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until brown, about 2 hours.

  3. Serve with cranberry sauce or apple 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Sage + cranberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which becomes tender and browned as it roasts slowly.
Bread dressing
Fills the folded ribs, adding moisture and savory flavor as it heats through.
Onion
Adds aromatic, savory sweetness to the bread dressing filling.
Sage
Contributes an herbal, aromatic flavor to the bread dressing filling.

The step that matters

Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until brown, about 2 hours. Low, steady heat lets the connective tissue in the ribs break down gradually, so the meat turns tender rather than tough. Browning is judged by color, so the ribs should be checked as they near the end.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, sage, cranberry. 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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