Name: Pork, Roasted
Ingredients: 1 whole pork roast; coarse sea salt; chopped bread-crumbs; sage; onions; pepper; sweet fresh fat; apple sauce

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork, Roasted

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Score the pork roast in slices.
Rub the pork with sweet fresh fat and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Roast the pork for 20 minutes per pound, basting often.
Prepare the stuffing by mixing chopped bread-crumbs, sage, boiled onions, pepper, and salt.
Stuff the pork if desired.
Serve with apple sauce in a tureen.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

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

Swap the apple

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

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Lemonfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, sage, onion, pepper, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.