Skip to main content
Main

Roast Loin of Pork

Roast pork loin seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley, baked at 350°F until cooked, served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Loin of 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.

Prepare

  1. Score the loin in close lines across and down, about ½ inch apart.

  2. Dredge the loin well with salt and pepper.

Roast

  1. Place the loin in the oven at 350°F (175°C) and cook slowly, allowing 25 minutes per pound.

  2. Baste every 5 minutes for the first half hour, then every 10 minutes thereafter.

  3. When thoroughly cooked, remove from the baking pan and place in a hot serving dish.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and serve with apple sauce and a little horseradish.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pork + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork loin
Is the main cut, cooked through slowly to stay tender and juicy.
Salt
Seasons the surface of the meat and helps it stay moist during roasting.

The step that matters

Baste on schedule during roasting. Regular basting keeps the surface from drying out while the loin cooks slowly. Frequent spooning of pan juices helps moisture stay in the meat and builds flavour on the outside.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, parsley, sauce. 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

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes