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 ↓
Creamed Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
Parboil the pork slices for 5 minutes.
Remove from water and coat one side of each slice in flour.
Fry and make the sauce
Fry the slices in a pan until golden brown.
Drain most of the fat from the pan.
Add the sweet cream to the pan and bring to a boil.
Serve
Serve the pork on a platter with the cream sauce.
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.
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Pork + creamtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,093 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 slices
- Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender after parboiling and frying.
- Flour
- Forms a coating that browns in the pan and gives the pork a crisp, golden surface.
- Sweet cream
- Adds richness and body, forming the sauce that is served over the pork.
The step that matters
Frying the floured slices. Flour browns quickly over direct heat, so the pan must be hot enough to brown the coating but not so hot that it scorches before the pork is cooked through.
“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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