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Pork Tenderloin in Milk

A pork tenderloin cooked in milk and butter, thickened with flour and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloin in Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and simmer

  1. Lard and brown the pork tenderloins in butter.

  2. Add ½ cup of milk and continue adding until cooked for about 45 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the tenderloins and thicken the gravy with a little flour.

  2. Pour the gravy over the tenderloins and serve very hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

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

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloins
The main meat, which becomes tender and juicy when cooked gently in liquid.
Butter
Fat that browns the surface of the pork and adds rich flavor.
Milk
Liquid that simmers with the pork and forms the base of the creamy gravy.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milky liquid into a smooth, coating gravy as it heats.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour starch thickens liquid only as it heats and is stirred. Dry flour dropped into hot liquid clumps, so it should be mixed smoothly into the gravy so the starch swells evenly.

“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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