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Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork seasoned with salad oil, stuffed with sage onion, served with sage and onion sauce, apple sauce, mustard, and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 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.

  2. Score the rind with six or seven cuts, about ½ inch apart.

  3. If desired, stuff the pork under the flap with sage and onion stuffing.

Roast

  1. Place the pork about 12 inches from the fire to cook gradually.

  2. Baste the pork often to ensure the crackling is crisp and not burnt.

  3. Roast for about 3 hours, ensuring it is well cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with sage and onion sauce, apple sauce, mustard, and boiled 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  5. Sage + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Provides the main meat, which cooks slowly to become tender and well done.
Sweet salad oil
Coats the rind so it crisps and resists burning during roasting.

The step that matters

Baste the pork often. Basting keeps the surface moist and helps the crackling crisp without scorching, since the rind can burn before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, sauce, apple, mustard, potato. 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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