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Roast Pork

Roast pork leg stuffed with a mixture of powdered crackers, cream, eggs, and herbs, then baked and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Roast Pork

Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Mix powdered crackers, cream, eggs, summer savory, pepper, and salt to make a stuffing.

  2. Cook the stuffing for about 10 minutes.

Stuff and roast the pork

  1. Raise the skin off the knuckle of the pork leg and fill it with the stuffing.

  2. Make deep cuts in the thick part of the leg and fill those as well.

  3. Dust the pork leg with flour and place it in a roasting pan with 1 pint of water.

  4. Roast for about 3.5 hours, basting often with the drippings.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim some fat from the gravy, add a little flour, and boil for a few minutes.

  2. Serve with apple sauce or your preferred 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Summer savory + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help it set when cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
Powdered crackers
Provide body to the stuffing and soak up the liquid.
Leg of pork
Main meat; its fat and drippings baste the roast and flavour the gravy.
Flour
Dusted on the pork for browning and used to thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Roasting and basting the pork. Roasting for a long time at low moisture lets the thick leg cook through, while frequent basting with the drippings keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, pepper, pork, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Summer savorythe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, pepper, pork, flour. 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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