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Spare Rib of Pork

A roasted pork spare rib seasoned with sage, salt, and flour, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and sage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,527 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spare Rib of Pork

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

  1. Cut the spare rib of pork down the middle.

  2. Sprinkle it with fine sage, coarse sea salt, and a little flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Place it in a 400°F (200°C) oven and baste it well.

  2. Serve with apple sauce, egg sauce, or white 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. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  2. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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

Spare rib of pork
Provides the main meat, whose fat and connective tissue keep the roast moist and flavorful as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted over the surface, it helps the seasoning cling and contributes to browning in the oven.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour. 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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