Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Leg of Pork

A pork leg stuffed with mashed potatoes, onion, sausage, egg, and herbs, baked with apples.

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

Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Stuffed Leg of Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay the leg of pork skin side down and remove the hitchbone.

  2. Cut along the leg bone to the knuckle joint and remove the leg bone, leaving the knuckle bone in.

Stuff and tie

  1. Fill the cavity with a stuffing of mashed potatoes, sautéed onion, salt, pepper, sage, sausage meat, and one egg.

  2. Draw the meat together, tie tightly, and score the rind.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly with a few apples in the pan until done, basting with apple juice and gravy.

  2. Allow to cool thoroughly before serving in slices, garnished with pickled onions, gherkins, tartar sauce, remoulade sauce, or fruit purée.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + oniontop 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. Potato + peppertop 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 sausage meat
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Fresh mashed potatoes
Bulks out the stuffing and soaks up meat juices, keeping it soft and moist.
1 whole egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
A few apples
Sweetness and acidity that complement the pork and flavor the pan juices.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until done. Pork cooked slowly at a moderate heat stays tender and juicy, while a stuffed joint cooked too fast can have a cooked outside and undercooked centre. The stuffing must reach a safe temperature throughout, so check the core before serving.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, onion, pepper, sage, meat, egg. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes