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Roast Pork with Cowpeas

A roast pork seasoned with sage, pepper, salt, onion, and cooked with cowpeas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 Pork with Cowpeas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pork

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a deep cut in the knuckle of the pork and fill it with sage, pepper, salt, and chopped onion.

Roast and finish

  1. When the roast is half done, score the skin without cutting deeper than the outer rind.

  2. Pour off excess fat when the meat is nearly cooked.

  3. Add the par-boiled cowpeas and cook slowly until the cowpeas are done and the meat is browned.

  4. 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.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 roast, providing the meat that is cooked and browned.
White cowpeas
Cook in the roasting juices, becoming tender and absorbing flavour from the pork fat.
Chopped onion
Stuffed into the knuckle, where it softens and flavours the meat from within.
Sage
Adds an aromatic herbal flavour that permeates the pork as it roasts.

The step that matters

Pour off excess fat when the meat is nearly cooked. Too much rendered fat left in the pan can make the cowpeas greasy and stop the meat from browning properly. Removing most of it lets the surface brown and the peas cook in concentrated juices.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, 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.

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