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Pork Chops

A pork chop dish simmered with milk, sherry, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Trim excess fat from the pork chops, leaving ¼ inch.

  2. Season the chops with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Fry the chops and the reserved fat until browned.

Simmer

  1. Pour boiling water over the chops and add the mustard.

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour with the milk to make a paste.

  2. Pour the paste over the chops and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the sherry just 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 + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork chops
Provide the meat, which browns on the surface and becomes tender during long simmering.
Fat from chops
Carries flavour and helps the chops brown well in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the chops.
Milk
Adds moisture and a creamy body to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the pork and milk.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the milk. Flour clumps when dropped into liquid, so it must be fully dispersed in the milk to make a smooth paste before pouring. Poured in lumps, it thickens unevenly and the sauce stays gritty.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, flour, milk, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, milk, sherry. 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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