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Leg of Pork Roasted

Roasted leg of pork served with a gravy made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Leg of Pork Roasted

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 your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the leg of pork for 20 minutes per pound, basting frequently with the drippings.

  3. Once cooked, place the pork on a platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off the fat from the pan and add a little hot water.

  2. Scrape the pan well to incorporate the drippings.

  3. If desired, thicken the gravy with flour, salt, and pepper.

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

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

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

Leg of pork
Forms the main roasted meat, cooked through by dry oven heat and basted for moisture.
Flour
Thickens the pan gravy by swelling in the hot liquid to give it body.

The step that matters

Basting the pork with its drippings. Spooning the rendered fat and juices over the meat keeps the surface from drying out and helps it brown. Basting often matters because a large cut roasts for a long time.

“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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