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Roast Leg of Pork

Roast leg of pork seasoned with sage, allspice, and black pepper, served with mashed potatoes and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 331 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Scald the leg of pork.

  2. Score the skin without cutting into the fat.

  3. Chop sage leaves and onions finely.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and allspice.

  5. Stuff the mixture into the pork.

Roast the pork

  1. Cover the scored skin with oiled paper while roasting.

  2. Remove the paper towards the end to crisp and brown the crackle.

Make the apple sauce

  1. Peel the apples.

  2. Quarter the apples.

  3. Core the apples.

  4. Cut the apples into small pieces.

  5. Combine apples, cider or water, lemon peel, and doves in a stewpan.

  6. Boil until reduced to pulp.

  7. Remove the lemon peel.

  8. Add lemon juice and mix.

  9. Mash thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve the roast pork with mashed potatoes and hot 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. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Fat and connective tissue keep the meat moist and rich during roasting.
Apples
Pectin and natural sugars break down into a soft, thick pulp when cooked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apple sauce and balances its richness.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the stuffing.
Sage leaves
Adds herbal aroma that complements the richness of the pork fat.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Remove the paper towards the end to crisp and brown the crackle. The paper traps steam so the skin stays soft. Uncovering it exposes the dry surface to heat, letting moisture evaporate so the proteins and sugars brown and the skin blisters into crackling.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, allspice, sage, onion, potato, 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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