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Roast Loin of Pork

Roast pork loin with optional lard or butter, stuffed with bread crumbs, sage, onions, pepper, and salt, served with apple sauce and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Loin of 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. Score the skin in strips about ¼ inch apart.

  2. If the pork is very lean, rub it with fresh lard or butter before roasting.

  3. Place the pork in a roasting pan with a little water underneath.

Roast

  1. Cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) at first to heat the meat through.

  2. Roast the pork for about 2 hours, allowing more time if it is very fat.

Stuffing and gravy

  1. For stuffing, mix bread crumbs, chopped sage, chopped onions, pepper, and coarse sea salt, and bake separately in a pie dish.

  2. Make gravy by stirring flour into the pork drippings.

Serve

  1. Serve the roast with apple sauce and pickles.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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 loin
The main cut, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts slowly.
Fresh lard or butter
Adds fat to very lean meat, helping keep it moist and browned.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into gravy.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the stuffing, soaking up the seasoned flavour.
Chopped onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the stuffing as they cook.

The step that matters

Roast the pork for about 2 hours. Roasting too hot or too long dries out lean meat, while too little time leaves it undercooked. Extra fat in the cut needs more time to render and cook through, so the timing must match the meat.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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