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Roast Loin of Pork

Roasted pork loin with sage, onions, and bread crumbs, served with apple sauce and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Roast Loin of Pork

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.

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the pork in strips about ¼ inch apart.

  2. If the pork is very lean, rub it with fresh lard or butter before placing it in the pan.

  3. Mix bread crumbs, chopped sage, chopped onions, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Place the pork in a roasting pan with a little water underneath.

Roast

  1. Cook the pork at 350°F (175°C) initially to prevent hardening the rind before the meat is cooked through.

  2. Roast the pork for about 2 hours, allowing more time if it is very fatty.

  3. Bake the stuffing separately in a pie dish.

Serve

  1. Make gravy by stirring flour into the pork drippings.

  2. Serve the roast with apple sauce and pickles.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Pork loin
Provides the main meat; its fat and connective tissue keep the roast moist as it cooks.
Lard or butter
Adds fat to very lean pork, helping keep the surface moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing, soaking up moisture and binding the seasonings.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into gravy.

The step that matters

Starting the oven at 350°F. Starting at a moderate temperature keeps the rind from hardening before the meat in the centre is fully cooked. A very hot start would toughen the skin while the interior lags behind.

Swap the apple

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

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

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