Skip to main content
Main

Baked Poek

A baked pork dish with potatoes, onions, apples, sage, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Poek

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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place an iron trivet in the middle of an earthen or tin dish.

  3. Fill the bottom of the dish with sliced potatoes, onions, and apples.

Season and bake

  1. Place the piece of fresh pork on the trivet.

  2. Sprinkle the pork with bruised sage, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add ½ cup of water to the dish.

  4. Bake in the oven until the pork is cooked through.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Forms the main protein; baking cooks it through gently, keeping the meat moist.
Potatoes
Absorb juices from the pork and soften as they bake, adding starch and body.
Apples
Soften in the baking juices, adding light sweetness that balances the savory pork.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it bakes, adding savory depth to the juices.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until the pork is cooked through. Pork must reach a safe internal temperature, and the record gives no time or thermometer reading, so the cook has to check doneness directly, for example with a food thermometer, rather than relying on appearance.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes