Name: Pork Chops, Fried
Ingredients: pork chops, 1 inch thick; salt; pepper; butter; powdered sage (optional); apple sauce (for serving)

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 Chops, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Trim the pork chops neatly.
Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper.
Melt butter in a frying pan.
Add the chops and fry until thoroughly cooked.
If desired, sprinkle powdered sage over the chops before serving.
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.

Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, butter, apple, sauce):

Sagethe original
Clovefits about as well
Thymefits less well
Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, butter, apple, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.