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Roast Leg of Pork

Roast leg of pork seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, served with a gravy made from pan drippings and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the leg in squares or parallel lines.

  2. Put a little water in the pan under the meat and sprinkle it with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the meat lightly with flour and roast for 25 minutes per pound.

  4. For added flavor, place a small onion in the pan while roasting, then remove it before making the gravy.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the pan.

  2. Place the pan on the stove, stir in 2 tablespoons of flour, and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add 1 pint of hot water, stirring constantly, and let the gravy cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Season the gravy with salt and pepper.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Is the main cut of meat that provides the bulk and flavor of the dish.
Flour
Lightly dusted on the meat, then cooked with fat to thicken the gravy.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the fat. Cooking the flour in the fat for a full minute before adding liquid helps it thicken smoothly. Adding the hot water while stirring constantly prevents lumps from forming in the gravy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, 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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