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Roast Spare Ribs

A roasted spare rib seasoned with coarse sea salt, cucumber pickle, and optional sage, served with a browned flour reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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.

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

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

  3. Baste the meat constantly until done.

  4. Once cooked, transfer the rib to a hot platter and discard the drippings.

  5. Add 1 cup of hot water to the dripping pan, bring to a boil, and thicken with browned flour.

  6. Season to taste and stir in the chopped cucumber pickle before serving.

  7. Turn the spare rib once during baking to brown both sides.

  8. For added flavor, sprinkle powdered sage over the rib before baking.

  9. Optionally, break the rib to fold it over a dressing and 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. Cucumber + flourtop 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
The main cut, which cooks through and browns on both sides during roasting.
Browned flour
Starch that thickens the boiling pan liquid into a smooth gravy.
Powdered sage
Adds an herbal aroma and savory flavor to the rib.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with browned flour. Flour starch thickens only when heated in liquid, so stir it into the boiling water gradually to avoid lumps. Adding it all at once or to cold liquid leaves clumps that do not dissolve evenly.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, flour, 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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