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Pork a LA Mode

A pork stew cooked with flour, onion, vinegar, sugar, allspice, and thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pork a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rub a little flour on the pork steaks.

  2. Place the steaks in a 400°F (200°C) oven and fry on each side until half cooked.

Stew

  1. Pour enough water to cover the steaks and let them stew.

  2. Add the finely chopped onion for seasoning.

  3. Stew the meat until it is as tender as chicken.

  4. Five minutes before serving, season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Add thickening, then mix in equal parts vinegar and sugar to flavor the dish.

  6. Sprinkle in enough fine pounded allspice to darken the stew.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 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
Provide the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Coats the steaks, helping them brown and giving the stew body when thickened.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the stewing liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the stew.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Stew the meat until tender. Collagen in pork breaks down into gelatin slowly over long, moist heat, which makes the meat tender. Rushing this stage leaves the meat tough, so it should cook gently under the liquid until it is fully tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice. 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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