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Pork Cutlets

Breaded pork cutlets served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut pork from the leg and remove the skin.

  2. Trim and beat the cutlets.

  3. Sprinkle the cutlets with salt and pepper.

  4. Prepare beaten eggs in a pan.

  5. On a flat dish, mix bread crumbs, minced onion, and sage.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard or drippings in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Dip each cutlet in the egg.

  3. Coat each cutlet with the breadcrumb mixture.

  4. Fry the cutlets for 20 to 30 minutes, turning often until cooked through.

  5. After frying, skim the gravy.

  6. Sprinkle a little flour into the gravy and boil briefly.

  7. Pour the gravy around the cutlets on the dish.

  8. Serve with apple sauce.

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. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork cutlets
Provide the main meat, which cooks through during frying.
Eggs
Bind the breadcrumb coating to the cutlet surface.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating around the cutlets when fried.
Flour
Thickens the pan gravy as it is stirred in and boiled briefly.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the coating.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets. Fry over moderate heat and turn often, because the breadcrumb coating can burn before the thick pork cooks through. Turning often promotes even browning and even cooking.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, egg, bread, onion, sage, 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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