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A roasted pork with carrots, turnips, onions, apples, and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pork

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 the pork

  1. Score the pork skin into little squares.

  2. If the skin is removed, trim excess fat and cut out the backbone.

  3. Place carrot, turnip, onion, cloves, peppercorns, and parsley or celery in a dripping pan.

  4. Lay the pork on the vegetables and brown it in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  5. Season the pork with salt, pepper, and pounded sage.

  6. Cook the pork for 15 minutes per pound.

Prepare the onions and apples

  1. Peel the onions and place them in a pan with sugar, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bake the onions in the oven, shaking occasionally for even browning.

  3. Wash, quarter, and core the apples.

  4. Place the apples in a pan with butter.

  5. Bake the apples until tender but not broken.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked pork on a hot dish.

  2. Arrange the apples and onions around the pork.

  3. Serve with boiled potatoes.

  4. Serve with brown gravy.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour out most drippings from the pan, leaving vegetable scraps.

  2. Set the pan over heat.

  3. Stir in a heaped tablespoon of flour until browned.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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
Provides the main meat; its skin scores and fat render to crisp and flavour the roast.
Sour apples
Their tartness balances the rich pork and they hold their shape when baked until tender.
Small white onions
Sugar and browning in the oven make them sweet and caramelised alongside the pork.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the apples and onions, promoting browning and flavour.
Flour (in the method)
Browned in the pan drippings, it thickens the gravy and adds a toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Brown the pork in the oven before roasting through. Starting the pork at high heat on the vegetables builds browned, crisp skin and surface flavour, which the lower-heat cooking that follows cannot fully create.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley, pepper, sage):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley, pepper, sage. 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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