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Pork

Roasted pork loin and leg seasoned with sage, onions, pepper, salt, butter, flour, mustard, served with apple sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Score the skin of the loin with a sharp knife.

  2. For the leg, score it and stuff the knuckle with finely chopped sage, onions, pepper, and salt.

  3. Alternatively, cut a hole under the twist, fill it with sage, and skewer it closed.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast until the rind is crisp.

  2. Prepare apple sauce to serve on the side.

  3. Make a little drawn gravy to add to the dish.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Sage + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 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 loin
Provides the lean main meat, with its skin scored to crisp into crackling.
Pork leg
Provides a second main cut that is stuffed with herbs and onions before roasting.
Sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavour that infuses the meat from within during roasting.
Onions
Add sweetness and savour to the stuffing as they soften and cook in the meat.

The step that matters

Roast until the rind is crisp. Rind crackles only when its surface is dry and hot enough for the fat and moisture to evaporate, so the skin must be scored and roasted long enough without the meat drying out.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, onion, pepper, butter, flour, mustard. 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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