Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork seasoned with sage, onion, breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, and egg yolk, served with apple sauce and mashed vegetables.

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 ↓

To Roast a Leg of Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Score the skin of the leg of pork in narrow strips and rub in powdered sage.

  2. Lift the skin at the knuckle and stuff with minced onion, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and beaten egg yolk.

  3. Fasten the skin down with a buttered string or skewers.

  4. Make deep incisions in the large end of the leg and stuff them, pressing the filling in tightly.

  5. Brush the skin with sweet oil to make it crisp and brown.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast for 3 to 4 hours, basting with sweet oil or fresh butter, not its own drippings.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy and thicken it with a little flour.

  3. Serve with apple sauce, mashed potatoes, and mashed turnips.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 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

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the roast, providing the meat that cooks through over several hours.
Egg yolk
Binds the onion and bread crumb stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the stuffing and give it body and a soft texture.
Sweet oil
Coats the skin to help it crisp and brown in the oven.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Brush the skin with sweet oil. Oil helps the skin dry and blister into crisp, browned crackling rather than staying soft. Applying it evenly on dry skin gives the best result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, bread, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, bread, pepper, egg, butter. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes