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Apple Pork

A roasted pork leg filled with apples, brown sugar, and lemon, baked with whole apples and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,581 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple 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 the pork

  1. Score the skin of the pork in a diamond pattern.

  2. Fill the cavity with chopped apples, brown sugar, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Place the pork in a large baking pan.

Add the apples and bake

  1. Surround the pork with whole apples, sprinkling them with brown sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  2. Add water to the pan.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for three hours, adjusting time based on the size of the pork.

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. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pork + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,786 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Provides the meat that becomes tender and juicy during the long, slow roast.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness as they soften and release juice into the pan.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps the surfaces brown and caramelize in the oven.
Lemon
Its rind and juice add aromatic brightness and acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adjust the baking time to the size of the pork. A roast's internal temperature depends on its mass, so a fixed time can leave a large cut undercooked or a small one dry. Checking doneness with a thermometer is more reliable than the clock.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, apple, sugar. 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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