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Pork, to Cook

A pork joint boiled with onions, carrots, celery, herbs, and stock, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pork, to Cook

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the pork joint with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place the pork in a large saucepan with a tightly fitting lid.

  3. Add onions, carrots, celery, sage, parsley, marjoram, thyme, and enough stock or water to cover the pork.

Simmer

  1. Bring the liquid to a boil, skim off any foam, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours, depending on the size of the joint.

  2. Once cooked, remove the pork and arrange the vegetables around it.

Serve

  1. Strain and thicken some of the gravy, then pour it hot over the pork.

  2. If serving cold, trim the pork and place it on a clean dish.

  3. Alternatively, thicken the remaining gravy and pour it over the meat to warm it up.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork joint
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the cooking liquid, which becomes the gravy.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the stock and gravy as they cook down.
Celery
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the stock and gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boil. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and makes the joint dry and stringy, while a gentle simmer lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin for a tender result. Skimming foam keeps the gravy clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, carrot, celery, sage, parsley, marjoram. 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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