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To Roast a Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of young pork seasoned with sage, onion, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Roast a Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut a slit in the knuckle of the leg with a sharp knife.

  2. Fill the slit with chopped sage, onion, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the leg until half-done, then score the skin in slices without cutting deeper than the outer rind.

  2. Serve with apple sauce and potatoes.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavour that penetrates the meat from the stuffed slit.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour that mellows during roasting.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat from within and helps the flavour penetrate the joint.

The step that matters

Scoring the skin without cutting too deep. Cutting into the meat beneath the outer rind lets juices escape during roasting, drying the joint. Scoring only the skin keeps the meat moist while allowing the crackling to crisp.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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