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Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork rubbed with sweet salad oil and optionally stuffed, scored, and basted over a fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the rind of the pork with sweet salad oil to prevent burning and enhance crispiness.

  2. Score the rind with six or seven cuts, about ½ inch apart, if not already done by the butcher.

Roast

  1. Place the leg of pork about 12 inches from the fire to allow gradual cooking.

  2. Baste the pork frequently as it cooks.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the roast, supplying meat, fat and rind that crisp during cooking.
Sweet salad oil
Coats the rind to help it brown and crisp rather than scorch.

The step that matters

Place the leg of pork about 12 inches from the fire. Distance from the heat controls how fast the outside browns versus how fast the centre cooks. Too close risks scorching the rind before the meat is cooked through, so a gradual distance allows even cooking and better crackling.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion. 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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