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Pork, Roast Leg of

Roast leg of pork with sage-and-onion stuffing, scored skin, brushed with salad oil, roasted over bright fire, served with gravy and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork, Roast Leg of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the pork leg in narrow strips, about ½ inch apart.

  2. Cut a slit in the knuckle and loosen the skin.

  3. Fill the skin with sage-and-onion stuffing.

  4. Brush the joint with a little salad oil for better crackling.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast over a bright, clear fire, not too close to avoid blistering the skin.

  2. Baste well during cooking.

  3. Serve with gravy from the dripping pan and apple 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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, whose skin and fat crisp and flavour the joint during roasting.
Salad oil
Coats the skin so it browns and crisps more evenly in the oven.
Sage-and-onion stuffing
Fills the skin pocket, adding moisture and herb aroma to the meat as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roast over a bright, clear fire, not too close. Intense direct heat too near the skin can blister and burn it before the fat renders and the crackling sets. Steady, moderate heat lets the skin dry and crisp evenly while the meat cooks through.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion. 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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