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Baked Leg of Pork

A pork leg cured with salt and saltpetre, smoked, baked, and topped with biscuit‑sugar crust, served with gravy and port‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Red wine and clove work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 849 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and smoke

  1. Rub the leg of pork with a mixture of salt and saltpetre.

  2. Let it brine for 5 to 6 days.

  3. Hang it up to smoke for another 5 to 6 days.

Prepare and bake

  1. Remove the skin and place it in an earthen dish.

  2. Pour a little red wine over the pork and stick in a few cloves or rub them over the meat.

  3. After a short time in the oven, spread pounded hard biscuit mixed with sugar over the pork.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy and port-wine sauce.

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. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + biscuittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Biscuit + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Is the main cut that is cured, smoked and baked.
Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat, giving it a pink colour and a cured flavour.
Red wine
Adds moisture and acidity to the meat and its flavour.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pork.
Hard biscuit
Forms a crumbly crust on the surface that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Adding the biscuit and sugar crust. Sugar browns quickly in oven heat and can scorch. Adding the crumb and sugar only after the pork has been in the oven for a short time lets the surface brown evenly without burning.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, red wine, biscuit, sugar, wine, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, red wine, biscuit, sugar, wine, sauce. 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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