Name: Pork Roasted a LA Francaise
Ingredients: 1 pork roast; ½ cup oil; 1 teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 bay leaf; 1 teaspoon dried thyme; 1 onion, chopped; 2 cloves, minced

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pork Roasted a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

Steep the pork roast in oil, pepper, salt, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, onion, and cloves for two days.

Roast and serve

Roast the pork, basting it with the marinade.
Serve with gravy.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork roast: Is the main cut of meat that is flavored and cooked as the centerpiece of the dish.
Oil: Carries the herbs and spices into the meat and helps keep the surface moist during roasting.
Black pepper: Adds sharp aroma and flavor that penetrates the meat during the long steep.
Onion: Contributes savory aroma and sweetness to the marinade as it steeps into the pork.

The step that matters

Basting with the marinade while roasting. Spooning the marinade over the roast as it cooks adds moisture to the surface and builds flavor and browning. Because the marinade contains raw pork-contact ingredients, the cook should be careful that it is not reused on the meat without being boiled first.

Swap the onion

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

Carrotfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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Pork Roasted a LA Francaise