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Pork-heart Goulash

A hearty stew of pork heart, onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and spices simmered in stock or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pork-heart Goulash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork hearts into 1-inch cubes.

  2. Sprinkle the cubes with flour mixed with salt and pepper.

Brown

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions, carrot, and celery and brown lightly.

  3. Add the pork hearts and brown, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a stewpan.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, mace, thyme (tied in cheesecloth), and tomatoes.

  2. Cover with soup stock or water.

  3. Simmer for 45 minutes (or 2 hours if serving immediately).

  4. Remove the bag of spices.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika to taste.

  6. Add the parsley before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork heart
Is the main meat, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they brown lightly in the fat.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the braising liquid.
Butter or fat
Carries the browning of the vegetables and meat and adds richness.
Flour
Coats the cubes so they brown well and help thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the pork hearts. Stirring frequently keeps the flour-coated meat and vegetables from scorching, since burnt bits taste bitter and spoil the sauce. Light, even browning builds flavor through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, parsley, pepper, flour, pork, butter, onion. 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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