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Leg of Pork a LA Boisson

A roasted pork leg with wine sauce, seasoned with spices and served with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Leg of Pork a LA Boisson

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut off the pig's head.

  2. Divide the body into four pieces.

  3. Lard the pieces with bacon.

  4. Season the pieces with salt, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

Stew the pork

  1. Place fat bacon at the bottom of a kettle.

  2. Lay the head in the middle of the kettle.

  3. Arrange the quarters around the head.

  4. Add a bay leaf, shredded onion, lemon, carrots, parsley, and the liver.

  5. Cover the mixture with more bacon.

  6. Stew for an hour in 1 quart of stock.

  7. Transfer the contents to a stewpan.

  8. Pour in a bottle of white wine.

  9. Cover the stewpan.

  10. Stew gently for another hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Skim off the fat from the first gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Add sweetbread, truffles, morels, and mushrooms to the strained gravy.

  4. Stew until done.

  5. Place the cooked pig in a serving dish.

  6. Pour the wine sauce over the pig.

  7. Garnish with lemon.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 body of the dish and becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid, flavouring the sauce.
Stock
Provides the moist cooking liquid that gently braises the meat.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the meat moist as it cooks.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Sweetbread
Adds a soft, delicate texture and rich flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the first gravy. Fat rises to the surface of the braising liquid and, left in, makes the sauce greasy. Removing it before straining gives a cleaner, smoother gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, nutmeg, clove, mace, lemon, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, nutmeg, clove, mace, lemon, carrot. 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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