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Collared Pork

Collared Pork is a stuffed pork leg baked with herbs, spices, bread, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Collared Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the sage, marjoram, basil, mace, cloves, nutmegs, potherbs, grated bread, butter, eggs, salt, and black pepper.

  3. Stuff the leg of pork with the mixture, tie it tightly, and skewer it well.

  4. Place the stuffed pork in a roasting pan and rub both sides with salt.

Bake

  1. Add water to the pan and bake for 2 to 3 hours, basting frequently.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Sage + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh pork leg
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing as it cooks.
Grated stale bread
Absorbs fat and juices from the stuffing, helping it hold together and stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing and meat moist and rich during baking.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds its shape when sliced.
Powdered sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma that flavours the stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Pork leg is lean and can dry out over a long bake of 2 to 3 hours. Frequent basting with the pan liquids keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, marjoram, basil, clove, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, marjoram, basil, clove, nutmeg, bread. 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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