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Pork, Loin Of, with Sauce Robert

A roasted pork loin served with a sauce made from butter, onions, flour, stock, and Bovril.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork, Loin Of, with Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the pork

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the loin of pork, basting liberally, for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the chopped onions until lightly browned.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the onions and stir for 2 minutes over low heat.

  3. Add salt, pepper, stock, and Bovril, then let the sauce simmer for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce onto a hot dish, place the pork on top, and serve immediately.

  2. Serve apple sauce in a tureen alongside, and add mustard to the sauce if desired.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork loin
Is the main cut, cooked through by roasting while basted to keep the surface moist.
Butter
Carries the onions as a fat, helping them brown and adding richness to the sauce.
Onions
Caramelise when browned, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and onions, giving it body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavour and thinning the roux.
Bovril
Adds concentrated meaty savoury flavour that deepens the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the onions. Stirring the flour over low heat for two minutes cooks out its raw starch taste before the liquid is added. Skipping this leaves a floury flavour and weaker thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, flour, onion, pepper, apple, sauce. 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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