Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roast Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the stuffing
Mix powdered crackers, cream, eggs, summer savory, pepper, and salt to make a stuffing.
Cook the stuffing for about 10 minutes.
Stuff and roast the pork
Raise the skin off the knuckle of the pork leg and fill it with the stuffing.
Make deep cuts in the thick part of the leg and fill those as well.
Dust the pork with flour and place 1 pint of water in the roasting pan.
Roast the pork for about 3.5 hours, basting often with the drippings.
Make the gravy and serve
Skim some fat from the gravy.
Add a little flour to the gravy.
Boil the gravy for a few minutes.
Serve with apple sauce or your preferred sauce.
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.
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Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together263 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together671 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Summer savory + porktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together239 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + porktop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,093 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Bind the stuffing and help it set as it cooks.
- Powdered crackers
- Add body to the stuffing and soak up the cream.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
- Leg of pork
- Main cut; its fat and juices keep the meat moist as it roasts.
- Flour
- Dusted on the pork and stirred into the drippings to thicken the gravy.
The step that matters
Roast the pork for about 3.5 hours, basting often with the drippings.. A large cut of pork needs long, steady heat to cook through, and regular basting with the drippings keeps the surface moist and helps it brown.
Swap the summer savory
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, pepper, pork, flour):
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Summer savorythe original
- Parsleyfits about as well
- Jalapenofits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, pepper, pork, 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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