Skip to main content
Main

Loin Op Pork

Roasted pork loin served with brown gravy, apple sauce, or Robert sauce, optionally with sage and onion stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and sage 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 ↓

Loin Op Pork

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the loin of pork in a roasting pan.

Roast

  1. Baste the pork liberally during cooking.

  2. Roast for about 2 hours or until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with brown gravy and apple sauce or Robert sauce.

  2. If desired, serve sage and onion stuffing in a separate dish.

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. Apple + sagetop 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. Sage + oniontop 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

Pork loin
Forms the main body of the dish; cooking firms its protein into sliceable meat.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness to the lean, cooked pork.
Apple sauce
Its tartness and sweetness cut through the richness of the roasted pork.
Sage
Adds a herbal aroma that complements the pork.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and body to the optional stuffing.

The step that matters

Roast until fully cooked, without overcooking. Pork loin is lean, so it dries out quickly once past doneness. Basting keeps the surface moist, but checking that the centre is fully cooked is what keeps the meat juicy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, apple, sauce, sage):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, apple, sauce, sage. 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

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes