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Pork Cutlets

Pork cutlets served with a tomato sauce and a reduced gravy made from the bones and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the meat from the bones.

  2. Cut the meat into ½-inch thick cutlets.

  3. Trim away excess fat.

  4. Save the kidney for breakfast.

Make the glaze

  1. Fry the bones, skin, and any bits of bacon or ham with the sliced onions until browned.

  2. Add enough water to cover the mixture.

  3. Boil the mixture for 2 hours to make a strong gravy.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Let the gravy cool to remove the fat.

  6. Boil the strained gravy with isinglass or gelatin and browning sauce until reduced.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the cutlets until nicely browned.

  2. Brush the cutlets with the glaze.

  3. Arrange the cutlets on a dish.

  4. Serve with tomato sauce made from the tomato compote.

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. Gelatin + saucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of small, dairy-fed pork
Forms the cutlets and provides the meat that is browned and served.
Isinglass or gelatin
Sets the reduced gravy into a glaze that clings to the cutlets.
Browning sauce
Adds colour to the glaze so the finished cutlets look deeply browned.
Tomato compote
Provides the base for the tomato sauce served alongside the cutlets.

The step that matters

Boil the strained gravy with isinglass or gelatin and browning sauce until reduced. Gelatin only sets when the liquid is concentrated and then cooled, so the gravy must reduce enough to become a glaze that clings to the cutlets rather than running off.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, gelatin, sauce, tomato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, gelatin, sauce, tomato. 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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