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Roast pork with optional sage and onion stuffing, basted with clarified butter or oil, served with brown gravy or apple or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Roast Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the pork in narrow strips before roasting.

  2. If using stuffing, loosen the skin from the knuckle and insert the stuffing.

  3. Brush the skin with clarified butter or salad oil if the meat is not very fatty.

Roast

  1. Place the pork at a distance from the heat initially to heat through without hardening the skin.

  2. Baste the pork constantly while roasting.

  3. Roast the leg of pork for 3 hours, loin for 2 to 2.5 hours, and spare rib for 1 hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg, loin and spare rib
Large cuts of meat that provide the main body of the roast and are cooked until tender.
Clarified butter or salad oil
Coats the skin to promote browning and crisping when the meat is lean.

The step that matters

Place the pork at a distance from the heat initially. Starting farther from the heat warms the meat through gently, so the skin does not harden before the interior is cooked. Basting throughout keeps the surface moist during the long roast.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, sage, onion. 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.

More roast pork recipes

Loin 29Leg 28Apple Sauce for 3Cold Steaks 3Shoulder 3Stuffed 3 See all 84 →

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