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Stuffed Leg of Pork

Stuffed leg of pork seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, and a seasoned dressing, baked slowly, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Stuffed Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of pork to make room for stuffing.

  2. Make a deep incision in the meat and fill it with the dressing.

  3. Skewer the openings together.

  4. Rub the outside with salt, pepper, and a little powdered sage.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly. Baste often.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the pan contents.

  2. Add a little cold water to make the fat rise.

  3. Skim the fat off.

  4. Thicken the liquid with 1 tablespoon of flour for every cup of liquid.

  5. Let the gravy cook for eight minutes.

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 + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 leg
Forms the main body of the roast and carries the stuffing while it cooks.
Dressing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and seasoning to the meat as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquid into a smooth gravy by swelling as it heats.
Pan drippings
Supply the fat and meat juices that form the base flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Skim the fat off. Fat and liquid separate as the drippings cool, and leaving too much fat makes the gravy greasy and thin. Removing it before thickening gives a cleaner, better-textured gravy.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, chicken, onion, flour. 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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