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Pork

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Pork

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Score the skin of the pork leg to make it easier to carve and improve crackling.

  2. Stuff the knuckle with chopped sage, onion, pepper, and salt, or place seasoning under the twist and secure with a skewer.

  3. Roast the pork until crisp for better crackling.

  4. For a spring pork, cut off the shank, sprinkle with sage and onion, roll it, and tie with string.

  5. Baste the spare rib with butter, a little flour, and dried sage.

  6. To make apple sauce, peel, core, and slice apples, then cook with a little water and lemon peel until soft.

  7. Remove the lemon peel, mash the apples, and mix in butter and sugar until smooth.

  8. Heat the apple sauce before serving it with the pork.

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

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, onion, pepper, butter, flour, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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