Skip to main content
Main

Pork Cutlets

Pork cutlets cooked with butter, onions, flour, gravy, vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork into nice-sized cutlets and trim off most of the fat.

  2. Chop the onions.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the cutlets and chopped onions.

  3. Fry until light brown.

  4. Add the remaining ingredients.

  5. Simmer gently for 5 to 7 minutes, then serve.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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
Provides the meat, which becomes tender and absorbs flavour as it simmers in the gravy.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they fry, adding depth and aroma to the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the pork and onions brown.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the cutlets rather than running thin.
Gravy
Supplies the main liquid and savoury body, keeping the meat moist as it simmers.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that sharpens and brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Browning the cutlets and onions builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying leaves the sauce flat, while over-browning turns it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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.

More pork cutlets recipes

Breaded 11Broiled 7Grilled 5Minced 3with Gherkins 3with Gravy 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes