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Pork Chops with Tomato Sauce

Pork chops sautéed with onions and served topped with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Chops with Tomato Sauce

6 pork chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the pork chops and flatten them with a potato masher.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it sizzles.

  2. Add the onion slices and sauté until soft.

  3. Place the pork chops in the pan and fry slowly for 5 minutes.

  4. Increase the heat and cook until the chops are browned and cooked through.

  5. Serve with tomato sauce on top.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 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 chops
Provide the main protein, which browns and sets as it cooks through.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and aroma to the pan.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and moisture as a topping for the finished chops.

The step that matters

Increase the heat and cook until the chops are browned and cooked through. Slow frying first gently warms the meat, then higher heat browns the surface. Cooking through needs enough time that the centre reaches a safe temperature, so the chops should be checked rather than judged by colour alone.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, pepper, tomato, sauce. 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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