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Pork Roast Dinner

A pork roast cooked with sweet potatoes and parsnips, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and parsnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pork Roast Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the pork until about half done.

  2. Add the sweet potatoes and parsnips to the pork.

  3. Cook together until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Sweet potato + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pork + sweet potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the main protein and fat that flavors the pan and cooks down with the vegetables.
Sweet potatoes
Add natural sweetness and a soft, starchy texture as they cook.
Parsnips
Add natural sweetness and a tender texture when cooked slowly alongside the meat.

The step that matters

Cook the pork until about half done. The pork must still finish cooking after the vegetables are added, so stopping at the right point helps it reach a safe, evenly cooked interior while the vegetables become tender.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sweet potato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sweet potato, pepper. 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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