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Pork, Roast Leg of

Roast a pork leg with sage and onion stuffing, scored skin, and serve with gravy and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pork, Roast Leg of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the leg of pork in narrow strips, about ½ inch apart.

  2. Cut a slit in the knuckle, loosen the skin, and fill it with sage and onion stuffing.

  3. Brush the joint with a little salad oil to make the crackling crisper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pork over a bright, clear fire, ensuring it is not too close to avoid blistering the skin.

  2. Baste the pork well during cooking.

  3. Serve with gravy made from the dripping pan and a tureen of well-made 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 + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 leg
Forms the main roast; its fat and connective tissue keep the meat moist and tender during cooking.
Salad oil
Coats the skin so it dries and browns into crisp crackling.
Sage and onion stuffing
Fills the slit in the knuckle, adding savoury aroma and flavour to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the roast away from the fire's heat. If the joint sits too close to the heat, the skin can blister and burn before the meat cooks through. Steady, moderate heat lets the fat render and the crackling crisp evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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