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Roast Leg of Pork

Roast leg of pork seasoned with salt, oil, onion, sage, served with gravy and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the leg of pork in stripes, ¼ inch apart.

  2. Brush the pork all over with salad oil.

Roast

  1. Hang the pork on a roasting jack before a good fire.

  2. For sage and onion flavor, add a whole onion and sage leaves to the dripping pan while roasting.

  3. Baste frequently while roasting.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy made in the dripping pan and apple sauce.

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 + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 body of the roast, cooking through to tender meat.
Salad oil
Coats the surface so it browns and keeps the meat from drying out.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the drippings used for gravy.
Sage leaves
Contribute aromatic herbal flavor that carries into the pan drippings.

The step that matters

Baste frequently while roasting. Spooning drippings over the surface keeps it moist and promotes even browning. Without basting, the exposed outer layer can dry out and darken unevenly before the interior is cooked.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, sage, 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.

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