Name: Pork Cutlets
Ingredients: Pork neck or fore-loin; Sage, finely chopped; Salt; Bread crumbs; Black pepper; Lard; Mashed potatoes; Tomato sauce or other sauce, to taste

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Trim the pork neck or fore-loin, leaving a little fat, and scrape the bone.
Mix chopped sage, a small amount of salt, and enough bread crumbs to form a mixture.
Season the mixture with black pepper and melted lard, then press it onto the cutlets.
Grease a saucepan with lard and fry the cutlets until they are a nice light brown.
Remove the cutlets and drain them on paper towels.
Serve the cutlets on a bed of mashed potatoes with tomato sauce or your choice of 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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, bread, pepper, potato, tomato):

Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Marjoramfits better
Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, pepper, potato, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.