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Leg of Pork Roasted Without the Skin, Called Mock Goose

A roasted leg of pork, skin removed, seasoned with sage, pepper, salt, breadcrumbs, and served with gravy and goose stuffing garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Leg of Pork Roasted Without the Skin, Called Mock Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the leg of pork and remove the skin.

Roast and season

  1. Roast the leg, basting it with butter.

  2. Mix sage, black pepper, salt, and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  3. Add minced onion if desired.

  4. Sprinkle the mixture over the pork when it is almost roasted.

Serve

  1. Pour made gravy into the dish.

  2. Garnish with goose stuffing or fried/boiled balls of it.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that is roasted and served.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and form a crisp, savoury crust on the outside of the roasted meat.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, helping the surface brown and stay moist during roasting.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma that flavours the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the mixture over the pork when it is almost roasted.. Adding the crumb coating too early lets it burn before the meat is cooked, while adding it too late leaves it pale and loose. Timing it near the end lets the crumbs toast and bind to the surface.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, sage, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, sage, pepper, bread. 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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