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Roast Leg of Pork

A roasted pork leg cooked slowly with butter, flour, and optional bread crumbs, served with apple sauce and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the leg in lines for carving.

  2. Optionally, remove the bone and fill the cavity with seasoned bread crumbs, adding lemon juice or vinegar for flavor.

  3. Tie the leg with tapes to maintain shape and prevent the dressing from escaping.

Roast

  1. Place the leg in a pan with a little water and heat slowly to avoid blistering.

  2. Baste with butter until there is enough gravy.

  3. Cook for at least 2 hours in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once done, remove the leg, skim the fat from the gravy, add boiling water, and thicken with flour.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Serve with apple sauce and pickles.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pork leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during long roasting.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, helping the skin brown and the gravy develop flavor.
Flour
Thickens the pan gravy so it coats the meat and serving spoon.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and add bulk and texture to the optional stuffing inside the leg.

The step that matters

Heat the leg slowly in a little water. Starting slowly lets fat under the skin render gradually, which helps prevent the skin from blistering and burning before the meat cooks through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread. 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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