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Roast Leg of Pork

A roasted leg of pork seasoned with vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, sage, and coated with butter or olive oil and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 Leg 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. Rub the pork with vinegar, salt, cayenne, and sage.

  2. Wrap the pork in a linen cloth dipped in vinegar and let it stand for several hours, keeping the cloth damp.

  3. Rub the pork with oil and flour.

Roast

  1. Roast the pork for 25 minutes per pound at 350°F (175°C).

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pork leg
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it cooks slowly.
Vinegar
Acidity that helps tenderize the surface of the meat during the resting wrap.
Ground sage
Adds a savory, aromatic herb flavor that penetrates the meat during standing.
Butter or olive oil
Fat that carries the seasoning and promotes browning on the outside of the roast.

The step that matters

Keeping the linen cloth damp during the standing time. A cloth that dries out can stick to the meat and pull at the surface. Keeping it moist maintains even contact with vinegar, so the seasoning and acid work evenly across the pork.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, vinegar, 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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