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To Roast Pork

A roasted pork leg stuffed with sage, onion, pepper, and salt, served with apple sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the leg of pork.

  2. Stuff the knuckle part with finely chopped sage, onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Alternatively, cut a hole under the twist and insert the stuffing, then skewer it closed.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pork until the rind is crisp.

  2. Serve with apple sauce and a little drawn 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.

  1. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, cooking into tender meat under crisp rind.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herb flavour to the stuffing.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Roast the pork until the rind is crisp. Crisp crackling forms when the rind's surface dries and browns at high heat. If the rind is not dried well before roasting, or the heat is too low, it will stay soft and chewy rather than crisp.

Swap the apple

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

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

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