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Leg of Pork in Imitation of Goose

A roasted leg of pork stuffed with goose stuffing, basted with butter and seasoned with pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and powdered sage, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Leg of Pork in Imitation of Goose

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the leg of pork.

  2. Remove the rind or score it in small diamonds.

  3. Stuff the knuckle and flap with goose stuffing.

Roast

  1. Roast the pork, basting with butter.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and powdered sage.

  3. Add ½ pint of good gravy to the dish.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that cooks through during roasting.
Goose stuffing
Fills the knuckle and flap, adding moisture and flavour to the inside of the joint as it roasts.
Butter
Basting with butter adds fat to the surface, encouraging browning and a richer flavour.
Bread crumbs
Sprinkled on the surface, they help form a crisp, golden crust during roasting.
Powdered sage
Adds an aromatic, savoury herb flavour to the crust.

The step that matters

Remove the rind or score it in small diamonds. Scoring the fat and skin lets fat render and the surface crisp evenly, while removing the rind leaves the meat exposed to direct heat. Cutting too deep can dry the meat, so cuts should stay shallow.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, pepper, bread. 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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