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Pork Chops, Fried

Fried pork chops seasoned with salt and pepper, cooked in butter, optionally topped with powdered sage, served with apple or piquant sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Chops, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the fat from the pork chops and sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper.

  2. Melt the butter in a sauté pan over medium heat.

Cook

  1. Add the pork chops to the pan and fry for 10 minutes on each side, or until thoroughly cooked.

Serve

  1. If desired, sprinkle powdered sage over the chops before serving.

  2. Serve with apple sauce or piquant sauce.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork chops
Main protein; frying cooks it through and browns the outside.
Butter
Fat that conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Frying the pork chops. Chops this thin can dry out quickly if overcooked, so check doneness rather than relying only on the clock. Medium heat lets the centre cook through while the surface browns without burning the butter.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, pepper, apple):

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, pepper, 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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