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Baked Pork

A pork roast baked with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and button onions, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Baked Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Score the pork in narrow lines.

  2. In a baking dish, combine the sliced onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and button onions.

  3. Sprinkle the vegetables with salt, pepper, mixed herbs, and add the dripping.

Roast

  1. Place the pork on top of the vegetables and cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C), basting frequently.

  2. About 30 minutes before serving, fry the button onions in hot fat until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve the pork on a hot dish, garnished with the fried onions, and serve the gravy in a sauceboat.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 or loin of pork
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts slowly.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding flavour to the pan juices.
Carrots
Add sweetness and flavour to the pan juices as they cook down.
Dripping
Carries heat and adds fat for richness and gentle browning of the vegetables and onions.
Button onions
Brown in hot fat to give a sweet, caramelised garnish.

The step that matters

Fry the button onions until browned. Frying in hot fat browns the sugars through the Maillard reaction, giving colour and flavour. Too little heat or too long a wait can leave them pale or soft, so timing them about 30 minutes before serving matters.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, sauce, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, sauce, pepper. 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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