Name: To Roast a Leg of Pork
Ingredients: 1 small leg of fine young pork; sage; onions, chopped; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

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 ↓

To Roast a Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut a slit in the knuckle of the pork and fill it with sage, chopped onions, pepper, and salt.

Roast and serve

Roast the pork until half done, then score the skin in slices without cutting deeper than the outer rind.
Serve with apple sauce and potatoes.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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 dish, with its meat cooking through during roasting.
Onions: Add moisture and savory sweetness as they soften inside the cut in the pork.
Sage: Adds a herbal aroma that is carried into the meat from the stuffing.

The step that matters

Scoring the skin without cutting deeper than the outer rind. Cutting into the meat lets juices escape and dries the flesh. Shallow scoring only breaks the skin, which helps it crisp and render fat while the meat stays moist.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Carrotfits better
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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To Roast a Leg of Pork