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To Roast a Leg of Pork, Fresh

A roasted leg of pork stuffed with a sage, apple, onion, and breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Roast a Leg of Pork, Fresh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Boil the onions, then mince them finely with sage leaves.

  2. Mix the minced onions, sage, shredded apple, pepper, salt, lemon rind, and bread crumbs.

  3. Bind the mixture with the egg yolk.

Stuff and roast

  1. Raise the skin around the knuckle and stuff the mixture into the leg, tying the leg to secure it.

  2. Score the skin in stripes about ½ inch apart without cutting into the flesh.

  3. Brush the skin with salad oil or butter before roasting.

  4. Keep the leg at a distance from the fire and baste continually.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Provides the main meat that is roasted and carved.
Onions
Add moisture and sweetness to the stuffing once boiled and minced.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the leg.
Shredded apple
Adds moisture and mild sweetness that balance the savory herbs.

The step that matters

Keep the leg away from the fire and baste continually. A large cut of pork roasts unevenly over direct, intense heat, so the outside can scorch before the centre cooks. Steady distance and regular basting keep the surface moist and browning gently while the interior heats through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, apple, pepper, lemon, bread, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, apple, pepper, lemon, bread, egg. 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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