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Pork, Baked

A pork leg or loin baked with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, button onions, herbs, butter, dripping, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pork, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Score the pork in narrow lines.

  2. Slice all the vegetables except the button onions.

Bake

  1. Place the sliced vegetables in a baking dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add the herbs and dripping.

  2. Lay the pork on top of the vegetables.

  3. Cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C), basting frequently.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Leg or loin of pork
The main cut, which cooks through in the oven and gives the dish its central flavour.
Dripping
Fat that coats the pork and vegetables, helping them brown and keeping the surface moist.
Onions
Sweetness and aroma that deepen as they soften and brown in the oven.
Carrots
Sweetness that concentrates as the vegetables roast in the fat.
Celery
Aroma and moisture released as it softens in the baking dish.

The step that matters

Basting frequently. Basting spoons the fat and juices back over the pork, which keeps the surface from drying and helps it brown evenly. Skipping it lets the meat dry out before it is cooked through.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, 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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