Name: Roast Pork
Ingredients: fresh ham; lard for greasing; small turnips; spices for flavoring; vinegar (optional)

Why it works: Turnip and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 652 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Pork

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.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grease roasting pans with lard.
Place the fresh ham in the pans.
Add one or two small turnips to each frying pan.
If using pork shoulders, roll them up to the shape of the cans before roasting.
Season with spices as desired.
Optionally, add a little vinegar to the jelly used for filling the cans.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Turnip + vinegartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together652 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).
Ham + turniptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together692 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).