Skip to main content
Main

Roast Pork Sparerib

Roast pork sparerib coated in flour, baked with gravy, topped with cracker crumbs, pepper, sea salt, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pork Sparerib

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 and start baking

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the sparerib in a dripping pan and cover it with greased paper.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Finish the roast

  1. Remove the paper, dredge the sparerib with flour, and baste with gravy.

  2. When nearly done, cover the surface with fine cracker crumbs.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with pepper, coarse sea salt, and powdered sage.

  4. Cook for an additional 10 minutes and baste again.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim the gravy and thicken it with browned flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sparerib
The main cut, roasted slowly under paper so it cooks through gently.
Flour
Dredging on the surface helps form a golden, browned crust.
Fine cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping on the surface of the meat.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds color and a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the cracker crumbs near the end. Crumbs brown quickly under oven heat, so adding them too early can scorch them before the meat is done. Adding them too late leaves the topping pale and soft.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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