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Pork Roasted with Tomatoes

Pork roasted with tomatoes, onions, herbs, and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Roasted with Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pork

  1. Rub the pork with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Dredge the pork with flour.

  3. Pour 2 cups of hot water into the roasting pan.

  4. Place the pork in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Roast and add tomatoes

  1. Roast for 2 to 3 hours, basting often.

  2. Peel the tomatoes and mash them in a bowl.

  3. Add the chopped onion, parsley, sage, and thyme to the mashed tomatoes.

  4. Skim the fat from the gravy in the roasting pan.

  5. Pour the tomato mixture into the roasting pan.

  6. Bake for an additional hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with a big dish of rice.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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 during long, slow roasting in liquid.
Tomatoes
Add moisture, acidity and body to the pan juices that form the gravy.
Flour
Coats the pork so the surface browns and thickens the gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens into the tomato mixture.

The step that matters

Skim the fat from the gravy. Fat that is not removed before the tomato mixture goes in will make the gravy greasy and can dull its flavor. Skimming keeps the sauce lighter and easier to control.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, tomato, parsley, sage, thyme. 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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