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Pork Loaf

A loaf of seasoned pork made by boiling, slicing, layering with stock, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Boil the pork, pigs' tongues, onions, and sage together until tender.

  2. Remove the meat and let it cool enough to handle.

  3. Free the meat from bones and cut it into long, thin slices.

Make the stock

  1. Boil the stock down until you have about 1 quart.

  2. Strain and season the stock.

Assemble and set

  1. Layer the meat in a mold, sprinkling chopped parsley, salt, and pepper between the layers.

  2. Pour enough stock over the meat to just cover it and set aside to cool.

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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the main meat, which sets firm and sliceable once chilled in the stock.
Pigs' tongues
Adds gelatin-rich connective tissue that helps the stock set into a firm jelly.
Onions
Flavour base that sweetens and rounds out the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Boil the stock down until you have about 1 quart.. Reducing concentrates the gelatin and flavour from the cooking liquid, so the stock will set firmly when cooled over the meat. Too much water left in leaves a loose, runny set.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, pepper, parsley. 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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