Skip to main content
Main

Roast Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork seasoned with vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, sage, and butter or olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Season and rest

  1. Rub the pork with vinegar, salt, cayenne, and sage.

  2. Wrap the pork in a linen cloth dipped in vinegar and let it stand for several hours, keeping the cloth damp.

Roast

  1. Rub the pork with oil and flour.

  2. Roast the pork for 25 minutes per pound.

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. 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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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 leg
Forms the main body of the dish, and its meat and fat carry the flavour and juiciness.
Ground sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma that flavours the meat's surface.
Butter or olive oil
Adds fat that helps the outside brown and crisp in the oven.
Flour (in the method)
Helps form a dry coating that browns and crisps on the roasted surface.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the seasoning on the meat's surface.

The step that matters

Keeping the cloth damp while the pork stands. A damp cloth slows surface drying while the salt and seasonings work into the meat. If the cloth dries out, the surface can dry and toughen, so it needs checking during the several hours of rest.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, vinegar, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes