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Barbecued Pork

Roasted pork loin seasoned with flour, pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and walnut catsup, served with fried apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Place the loin of pork in the oven without water.

  3. Sprinkle the pork with flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Baste the pork with butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook for 2 to 3 hours, or until very brown.

  2. Pour in ½ cup of walnut catsup before serving.

  3. Serve with fried apples.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

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

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 loin
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown during roasting.
Walnut catsup
Adds tangy, savoury flavour to the pork before it is served.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the outside brown and form a crust.

The step that matters

Cooking until very brown. Long, dry oven cooking with no water allows the surface to brown through the Maillard reaction. Cooking too briefly leaves the crust pale and flavour flat, while the pork needs the full time to become tender.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

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