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Leg of Pork, Good As Goose

A pork leg stuffed with minced onion, apple, sage, breadcrumbs, butter, and egg, baked and served with gravy and apple sauce.

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

Leg of Pork, Good As Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Parboil the leg of pork and remove the skin.

  2. In a bowl, mix the minced onion, chopped apple, bread crumbs, chopped sage leaves, butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Bind the mixture together with the egg yolk.

Stuff and roast

  1. Make a slit in the knuckle of the pork and stuff it with the mixture, securing it well.

  2. Place the pork in the oven and baste it liberally.

  3. Half an hour before it's done, sprinkle the savory powder made of bread crumbs, powdered sage, pepper, and salt over the pork.

  4. Do not baste the meat after adding the savory powder.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices of the stuffing, giving it a moist, soft body.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when packed into the pork.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the stuffing.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the stuffing.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness and moisture that balances the rich pork.

The step that matters

Stop basting after adding the savory powder. The powder needs a dry surface to crisp into a crust; further basting would moisten it and soften the coating.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, bread, sage, butter, pepper, egg. 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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