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Roast Pork

Roast pork seasoned with bread crumbs, onion juice, lemon peel, and spices, cooked in a roaster with water, served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Roast Pork

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Score the skin of the pork until the knife touches the meat.

  2. Stuff the scored areas with a mixture of bread crumbs, onion juice, grated lemon peel, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the pork in a roaster with 1 cup of hot water underneath.

Roast

  1. Cover and bring to a boil until the water steams.

  2. Reduce the heat and cook for 25 minutes per pound, basting often with the gravy.

  3. Twenty minutes before removing the meat, pour off the gravy and chill it to separate the fat.

Finish the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned flour if desired, or serve with apple sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork roast
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders and keeps the meat moist as it cooks.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb the juices inside the stuffing, helping keep the meat moist and holding the filling together.
Onion juice
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the stuffing and the meat.
Grated lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that brighten the flavor of the pork.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the pork.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor and color.

The step that matters

Chill the gravy before skimming. Chilling lets the fat rise and solidify on top so it can be lifted off cleanly, leaving a lighter gravy. Pouring off the gravy at the right time keeps the drippings usable.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, onion, lemon, pepper, flour, sauce. 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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Loin 29Leg 28Apple Sauce for 3Cold Steaks 3Shoulder 3Stuffed 3 See all 84 →

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