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To Roast a Leg of Pork, Fresh

A roasted pork leg seasoned with onions, sage, apple, pepper, salt, lemon rind, bread crumbs, egg yolk, and butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Roast a Leg of Pork, Fresh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Boil the onions.

  2. Mince the boiled onions finely with sage, apple, pepper, salt, and lemon rind.

  3. Mix the minced ingredients with bread crumbs and bind with egg yolk.

Stuff and score

  1. Raise the skin around the knuckle and stuff it with the mixture, tying it securely.

  2. Score the skin in half-inch stripes without cutting into the flesh.

Roast and crisp

  1. Brush the skin with salad oil or butter and place it at a distance from the fire.

  2. Baste continually and ensure it is thoroughly roasted.

  3. Cook for about three hours.

  4. After two hours, brush the skin with butter.

  5. Dredge the skin with flour.

  6. Move it closer to the fire for crackling.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

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

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 over the long roasting time.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the onions and bind the stuffing so it holds together.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing mixture together as it sets with heat.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture to the stuffing as they soften when boiled and minced.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a golden color on the skin.
Flour
Dredged on the skin, it helps the surface brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Scoring and drying the skin before roasting. Scoring cuts through the skin, not the flesh, so fat renders and the skin can crisp. Oil or butter and flour then help the surface brown. Basting keeps the meat moist while the skin dries out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, apple, pepper, lemon, bread, egg. 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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