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Pork Chops

Pork chops simmered in a tomato sauce made with flour and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper 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

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Season the pork chops with 1 teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.

  2. Heat a frying pan and cook the chops slowly for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the chops and stir the flour into the fat remaining in the pan until smooth and frothy.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Season the sauce with the remaining salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Arrange the chops on a warm dish and pour the sauce around them.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork steak
Provides the main meat, which cooks through gently in the pan and releases fat for the sauce.
Strained tomatoes
Form the liquid base of the sauce, adding acidity and body as they simmer.
Flour
Thickens the pan fat and juices into a smooth sauce that coats the chops.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the pan fat. Flour must be cooked briefly in the hot fat until smooth and frothy; this removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the sauce evenly without lumps when the tomatoes are added.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, 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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