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Roast Pork

Roast pork seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, cooked in oven and finished with a gravy made from pan juices and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Roast Pork

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 ↓

Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the pork thoroughly on both sides with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and sage.

Roast

  1. Place the pork in a pan without water and roast, basting frequently with the fat that fries out.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes per pound, plus an additional 20 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off excess fat, add water to the pan to make gravy, and thicken carefully with flour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Is the main cut being cooked, and its own fat bastes the meat as it roasts.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquids into a gravy as it heats with the juices.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps easily. Adding it carefully, gradually and whisked, lets starch granules disperse and swell evenly into a smooth, thickened gravy.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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