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Baked Leg of Pork

A pork leg seasoned with salt, saltpetre, cloves, and wine, smoked, baked, topped with biscuit-sugar mixture, served with gravy and port wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Red wine and port wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and smoke

  1. Rub the leg of pork with a mixture of coarse sea salt and saltpetre.

  2. Let it sit in brine for 5 to 6 days.

  3. Hang it up to smoke for another 5 to 6 days.

Prepare and bake

  1. Remove the skin and place the pork in an earthen dish.

  2. Pour a little red wine over the pork and stick a few cloves into it.

  3. After a short time in the oven, spread pounded hard biscuit mixed with sugar over the pork.

  4. Serve with gravy and port wine sauce.

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. Red wine + port winetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + biscuittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Is the main cut of meat that is cured, smoked and baked.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic cured colour and flavour.
Hard biscuit
Mixed with sugar and spread over the pork, it forms a crust that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Combines with the pounded biscuit to add sweetness and help the crust brown.
Red wine
Poured over the pork to add moisture and flavour during baking.

The step that matters

Spreading the biscuit and sugar crust after a short time in the oven. If the crust goes on too early or the oven is too hot, the sugar can burn before the meat is cooked through. Adding it after a short time lets the surface set and brown evenly as the pork finishes cooking.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, red wine, biscuit, sugar, port wine, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, red wine, biscuit, sugar, port wine, 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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