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Roast Pork

Roast pork seasoned with coarse sea salt, pounded sage, and butter, optionally stuffed, served with cabbage, vinegar, or sauer kraut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Roast Pork

Why it works: Pork and sage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,527 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If desired, stuff the pork with well-seasoned sage stuffing.

  2. If the skin is left on, cut it into squares.

  3. If the skin is removed, sprinkle pounded sage over the meat and cover with buttered paper.

  4. For added flavor, sprinkle the pork with salt an hour or two before roasting.

Roast

  1. Position the pork far from the fire to ensure thorough cooking.

  2. Roast for 20 minutes per pound, basting initially with butter and then with its own drippings.

Serve

  1. Serve with cabbage cooked with vinegar or sauer kraut if desired.

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.

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

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

  2. Sage + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pork + cabbagetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it cooks slowly.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown during basting.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat deeply and helps the proteins hold moisture.

The step that matters

Position the pork far from the fire. Keeping the meat away from direct, intense heat lets the interior cook through gradually. Too close a heat source can scorch the outside before the centre reaches a safe, even doneness.

Swap the cabbage

The recipe marks cabbage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, butter, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, butter, vinegar. 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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Loin 29Leg 28Apple Sauce for 3Cold Steaks 3Shoulder 3Stuffed 3 See all 84 →

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