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Pork Steaks

Pork steaks cooked slowly, brushed with butter, pepper, salt, sage, and onion, then rested.

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 Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Cook the pork steaks like beefsteak, but for a longer time, turning them more often.

  2. Place the cooked pork steaks on a hot dish.

Season and serve

  1. Brush both sides of the pork steaks with melted butter mixed with black pepper, coarse sea salt, powdered sage, and minced onion.

  2. Cover the pork steaks and let them rest for a few minutes before serving.

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork steaks
Form the main body of the dish, cooked through and served tender when cooked longer.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the surface of the cooked steaks.
Minced onion
Adds savory flavor to the butter brushed over the steaks.
Powdered sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic flavor to the butter coating.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, pepper, sage):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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