Name: Pork Cutlets
Ingredients: Pork cutlets, ½ inch thick; Pepper; Coarse sea salt; Flour; Sage; Egg; Bread crumbs; Clarified butter

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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Trim the pork cutlets into a neat form and remove excess fat.
For broiling, sprinkle with pepper and broil over a moderate fire for 15-20 minutes.
Just before removing from heat, sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
For frying, flour the cutlets and season with pepper, salt, and sage.
Optionally, dip the cutlets in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs mixed with minced sage.
For broiling, add clarified butter to the egg or sprinkle it on the cutlets before cooking.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the sage

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

Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Sagethe original
Marjoramfits about as well

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