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Roast Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork seasoned with sage, onion, pepper, and salt, served with apple sauce, potatoes, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Roast Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pork

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make a slit in the knuckle of the pork and fill it with chopped sage, onion, pepper, and salt.

Roast and score

  1. Roast the pork until half done, then score the skin in slices without cutting deeper than the outer rind.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. To make the gravy, remove excess fat, add flour mixed with a little water, and then add water to achieve the desired consistency.

  2. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat alongside apple sauce and potatoes.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Sage + appletop 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 leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy as it cooks in the fat.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour that moves into the pork from the knuckle filling.
Sage
Adds a herbal, aromatic flavour that pairs with the rich pork.

The step that matters

Scoring the skin without cutting into the meat. Cuts deeper than the outer rind let juices escape and dry the meat. Shallow scoring lets fat render out and helps the skin crisp.

Swap the apple

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

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

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