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Pork Cutlets

Pork cutlets served with a chestnut and vegetable mixture, glazed and garnished with tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork loin into delicate cutlets.

  2. Fry the cutlets in 2 ounces of butter over high heat.

Make the chestnut wall and vegetables

  1. Boil the carrot, turnip, apple, and parsnip until tender, then cut them into thin strips and keep warm.

  2. Boil the chestnuts until very soft, then remove the shell and skin.

  3. Pound the chestnuts with pepper, salt, and 1 ounce of butter, then rub through a sieve.

  4. Arrange the chestnut mixture as a wall on a serving dish.

  5. Bake the tomatoes and use them to garnish the dish.

  6. Fill the center of the chestnut wall with the cut-up vegetables.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the melted glaze around the cutlets and squeeze lemon juice over everything.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Parsnip + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork loin
Provides the meat that is cut into cutlets and fried until cooked through.
Chestnuts
Boiled and pounded into a smooth, thick mixture that holds its shape as a wall.
Butter
Fries the cutlets and enriches the pounded chestnut mixture with fat for a smooth texture.
Glaze
Melted and poured around the cutlets to add sweetness and a glossy finish.
Tomatoes
Baked to soften and add a mild acidity and color as a garnish.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets over high heat. Thin cutlets cook quickly, so high heat browns the outside before the inside dries out. Pork is best cooked just until done, since overcooking makes it tough and dry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, tomato, carrot, turnip, parsnip, apple):

  1. Cherryfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, tomato, carrot, turnip, parsnip, apple. 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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