Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork stuffed with onion, sage, pepper, salt, and egg yolk, then baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Roast a Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Score the skin of the leg of pork in narrow stripes. Form diamonds if desired.

  2. Rub powdered sage into the skin.

  3. Lift the skin at the knuckles.

  4. Stuff the skin with minced onion, sage, pepper, salt, and beaten egg yolk.

  5. Fasten the skin down with buttered string or skewers.

  6. Make deep incisions in the large end of the leg.

  7. Stuff the incisions with the filling. Press the filling in firmly.

Roast and finish

  1. Rub olive oil all over the skin with a brush to make it crisp and brown.

  2. Position the leg of pork away from the fire to prevent burning and blistering of the skin.

  3. Roast the leg for 3 to 4 hours, basting it frequently with sweet oil or its own drippings.

  4. Skim the fat from the gravy and thicken it with a little flour.

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. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Sage + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,138 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Pork + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,716 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, becoming tender and juicy as it roasts slowly.
Olive oil
Coats the skin to help it crisp and brown in the oven.
Beaten egg yolk
Binds the onion and sage filling so it holds together inside the pork.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth gravy.
Minced onion
Adds savory flavor to the stuffing as it cooks inside the meat.

The step that matters

Position the leg away from the fire. Direct, intense heat can burn and blister the skin before the interior cooks through. Keeping the leg farther from the heat source allows gentle, even roasting and a crisp, browned skin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, pepper, egg, olive, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, pepper, egg, olive, 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes