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Roast Spare Rib

Roast spare rib coated in flour, butter, and seasoned breadcrumbs, served with a browned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Roast Spare Rib

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.

Roast

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cover the spare rib with greased paper and roast until half done.

  3. Remove the paper and dredge the rib with flour.

  4. Baste with butter after a few minutes, then with its own gravy regularly.

  5. Before finishing, sprinkle with seasoned bread crumbs and minced onion.

  6. Cook for 5 more minutes and baste again with butter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the gravy, add hot water, thicken with brown flour, and squeeze in lemon juice.

  2. Strain the gravy and pour over the meat.

  3. Serve with tomato ketchup if desired.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Is the main cut of meat that provides the substance and flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown while basting.
Flour
Dredging the rib creates a dry coating that helps the surface brown and crisp.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a seasoned crust on the surface that adds texture as the meat finishes cooking.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running off.
Juice of 1 lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Basting with the meat's own gravy. Regular basting moistens the surface as it roasts, so the exterior browns without drying out. Letting the gravy reduce too far or skipping basting leaves the rib dry.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, bread, sage, pepper, onion, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, bread, sage, pepper, onion, lemon. 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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