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Quick Savory Cranberry Glazed Pork Loin Roast

"This simple, 1-hour roast is our favorite Christmas dish and voted most likely to be served if the President were to drop in for dinner- LOL! I love serving this entree because it causes me NO stress and everyone raves over it. While the pork is roasting, make another batch of the cranberry glaze to serve in a gravy boat alongside the sliced pork roast. For food safety, the new batch should not be prepared in same pan as the first if you have been basting directly out of the saucepan. If you basted out of another dish, you can use the same pan."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 123 recipes mention both. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

The recipe

1 roast
Prep10 min
Cook50 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Place a rack in a roasting pan or rimmed baking dish.

  2. In a saucepan, stir together the cranberry sauce, apple jelly, Dijon mustard, crushed chicken bouillon, horseradish, garlic powder and chopped thyme. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

  3. Simmer the glaze, stirring often, for about 8 minutes until smooth and slightly thickened. Remove from heat and set aside.

  4. Pat the pork loin dry and season all over with the salt and black pepper. Place it fat side up on the rack in the pan.

  5. Spread about two-thirds of the glaze over the top and sides of the pork loin, reserving the rest for serving.

  6. Roast for about 30 minutes, then brush with more glaze and roast another 10 to 15 minutes.

  7. Check the thickest part of the pork with a meat thermometer. Roast until it reads at least 145°F (63°C), then transfer to a cutting board.

  8. Let the pork rest for 3 minutes, then slice and serve with the remaining warm glaze spooned over the top.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cranberry + porktop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together123 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,813 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chicken + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,375 recipes

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

  4. Cranberry + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Berry + cranberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (berry, cranberry, sauce, mustard, chicken, horseradish, garlic):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Cherryabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against berry, cranberry, sauce, mustard, chicken, horseradish, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).