Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Leg of Fork

A roasted leg of fork filled with mashed potatoes, butter, cayenne pepper, salt, onion, and sage, served with apple or cranberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Stuffed Leg of Fork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Make deep incisions in the meat parallel to the bone, leaving the skin longer than the flesh.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes with butter, cayenne pepper, salt, onion, and rubbed sage.

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the incisions with the potato mixture, draw the skin down, and skewer it to secure the filling.

  2. Season the outside of the meat with salt, cayenne pepper, and rubbed sage.

  3. Roast the meat slowly until done.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour the gravy into a pan, skim off the fat, and add flour mixed with water.

  2. Let the gravy boil once before serving with apple or cranberry 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.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Leg of fork
Provides the main body of meat that is roasted and stuffed.
Potatoes
Form a soft, moist filling that bulks out the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mashed potato filling.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savour to the potato filling.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and serving.

The step that matters

Roast the meat slowly until done. Slow roasting lets the thick meat and the potato filling heat through evenly, so the centre cooks fully without the outside drying out or burning.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, butter, pepper, onion, sage, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, butter, pepper, onion, sage, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes