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Pork Tenderloin with Bacon

A pork tenderloin cooked with bacon and cream, finished with crispy bacon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,093 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloin with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the bacon in a skillet until crispy, then remove it from the pan.

  2. Dredge the pork tenderloin in flour.

  3. Fry the pork tenderloin in the same skillet.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the cream into the skillet.

  2. Let it cook for a few minutes.

Finish

  1. Remove the tenderloin from the skillet.

  2. Garnish with the crispy bacon.

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. Pork + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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 tenderloin
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through as the protein centre.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty, smoky flavour, and its crisp pieces give texture as a garnish.
Flour
Coats the pork so it browns in the pan and helps thicken the pan juices.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, and thickens slightly as it reduces in the skillet.

The step that matters

Frying the pork tenderloin. Pork tenderloin is lean and dries out quickly, so it should be cooked just until done and removed from the skillet promptly. Overcooking makes it tough, and the flour coating needs enough heat to brown rather than steam.

“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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