Name: Pork, with Apple Sauce
Ingredients: 1 suckling pig; 1 cup apple sauce

Why it works: Apple and sauce work together. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 965 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pork, with Apple Sauce

Ingredients

1 suckling pig
1 cup apple sauce

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

Prepare the suckling pig by cleaning and seasoning it.

Roast and serve

Roast the pig in a 350°F (175°C) oven until fully cooked.
Serve the pig with apple sauce on the side.

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.

Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together965 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suckling pig: Is the main cooked meat, so its fat and connective tissue soften and the flesh becomes tender during roasting.
Apple sauce: Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, fatty pork when served alongside it.

“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.