Skip to main content
Preserve

To Boil a Leg of Pork

A leg of pork is soaked in coarse sea salt, boiled until tender, and served with peas‑pudding and greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the leg of pork in coarse sea salt for 7 to 10 days.

  2. Wash the pork thoroughly.

  3. Tie the pork in a cloth to improve the color.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pork in plenty of water on low heat until tender.

  2. Serve with peas-pudding and greens.

  3. Save the cooking liquid to make pea-soup with leftover peas-pudding and optional celery, leeks, or onions.

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. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Peas + leektop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together249 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the pork, drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat through its surface.
Peas-pudding
Serves as the traditional accompaniment, adding a soft, starchy texture to the meat.

The step that matters

Boil on low heat until tender. Boiling gently keeps the meat from toughening and breaking apart. A rolling boil tightens muscle proteins and dries the outside, so low heat gives a more tender result.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, peas, leek, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, peas, leek, 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes