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Pork a LA Braise

A braised pork leg seasoned with salt, herbs, and breadcrumbs, served with brown gravy and bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pork a LA Braise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the leg of pork four to five days in advance.

  2. Stuff the pork with your choice of stuffing, preferably parsley and green herbs.

  3. Par-boil the leg, then remove the outer skin.

  4. Rub the leg with bread crumbs and seasoning.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pork, basting it with crumbs during cooking.

  2. If the pork is not sufficiently fatty, use a little dripping or butter to baste.

  3. Serve with brown gravy and bread 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into tender, sliceable meat.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat deeply during the long rest before cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on the outside of the pork as it roasts.
Dripping or butter
Adds fat to the surface, helping the crust brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Par-boil the leg, then remove the outer skin. Par-boiling partly cooks the meat and softens the skin so it can be removed cleanly without tearing the flesh. Removing the skin before roasting lets the crumb coating and seasoning reach the meat and brown well.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, 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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