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Pork Roast

A slow-roasted pork with optional onion, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, and flour, served with potatoes and garnished with parsley or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the pork well and rub coarse sea salt and black pepper over it.

  2. Optionally, add a small onion for flavor.

  3. Spread tomato ketchup, mustard, and vinegar over the pork.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the top.

  5. Add boiling water.

Roast and serve

  1. Cook in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about four hours, basting occasionally.

  2. Peel sweet or Irish potatoes and cook them with the roast.

  3. Garnish with parsley or celery before serving.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender and juicy during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Sprinkled on top, it helps form a light crust that adds browning and body to the surface.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, and helps the surface brown and caramelize as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the pork.

The step that matters

Cook in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about four hours, basting occasionally. Low, steady heat lets the connective tissue in the pork break down gradually, giving tender meat. Basting keeps the surface moist so it does not dry out or scorch over the long cook.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, tomato, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, tomato, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, 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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