Name: Pork Steaks
Ingredients: Pork, sliced; Cayenne pepper; Coarse sea salt; Pulverized sage; Cranberry sauce or apple sauce

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

Season the pork slices with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and pulverized sage.
Fry the pork slices in a pan until they are golden brown on both sides.
Place a mound of cranberry sauce in the center of a serving dish.
Arrange the fried pork slices around the cranberry sauce.
If preferred, use apple sauce instead of cranberry 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.

Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + cranberrytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + cranberrytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together123 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).