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Pork, Baked

A roasted pork leg or loin baked with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, button onions, herbs, butter, dripping, and served with gravy and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Pork, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Score the pork in narrow lines.

  2. Slice all the vegetables except the button onions.

  3. Place the sliced vegetables in a roasting pan.

  4. Add the button onions on top of the vegetables.

  5. Rub the pork with salt, pepper, and mixed herbs.

  6. Melt the butter and dripping, then pour over the pork.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a 350°F (175°C) oven until cooked through, basting occasionally.

  2. Serve with gravy and apple 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. 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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Forms the main protein; roasting cooks it through while the surface browns.
Butter and dripping
Add fat that carries flavour and helps the pork brown and stay moist.
Carrots and onions
Release sugars and moisture as they roast, sweetening the pan juices.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the finished pork and vegetables.

The step that matters

Roast until cooked through, basting occasionally. Pork needs to reach a safe internal temperature, and it dries out quickly at the surface. Basting with the fat in the pan keeps the meat moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, 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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