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Baked Pork Tenderloin

A pork tenderloin stuffed with bread dressing, seasoned with pepper, sea salt, butter, and sage, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Pork Tenderloin

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. Split the tenderloin down one side and pound it flat.

  2. Fill with bread dressing and sew it up.

  3. Season well with pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and sage.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloin
Main protein that sets and firms as it cooks, forming the body of the dish.
Bread dressing
Absorbs juices and adds moisture and body inside the rolled meat.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown gently.
Sage
Adds an aromatic, herbal flavour to the meat and filling.

The step that matters

Baking until cooked through. A stuffed roll cooks slower at its centre than its outside, so the centre can stay underdone while the edges dry out. Checking that the middle is fully cooked, without overbaking, keeps the pork safe and moist.

Swap the sage

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

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

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