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Minced Fresh Pork

A baked loaf of minced pork mixed with soaked bread, eggs, sage, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Minced Fresh Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread in milk until soft.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced pork, soaked bread, beaten eggs, salt, pepper, and powdered sage.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, with fried apples as an accompaniment.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean fresh pork
Provides the main bulk and meaty texture of the loaf.
Stale bread
Soaked in milk, it holds moisture and keeps the loaf tender rather than dense.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when sliced.

The step that matters

Baking for the full time at moderate heat. Pork must be cooked through, and a moderate oven cooks the dense loaf evenly without drying the outside before the centre is done. Stopping early leaves the centre undercooked.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, milk, egg, pepper, butter. 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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