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Broiled Pork Tenderloin

Broiled pork tenderloin marinated with onion, pickled cucumber, spices, and vinegar, then broiled and served with apple sauce or fried tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Broiled Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the membranous skin from the pork tenderloins.

  2. Combine the tenderloins with onion, pickled cucumber, salt, black pepper, cloves, allspice, thyme, water, and vinegar in a dish.

  3. Let marinate overnight.

  4. Drain the tenderloins and brush them with olive oil.

  5. Dredge the tenderloins in cracker crumbs.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil thoroughly over a charcoal fire.

  2. Serve the tenderloins on a mound of hot apple sauce or a pyramid of fried tomatoes.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloins
Provide the lean meat that is broiled and served as the main dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the marinade, which helps tenderize the meat and brighten its flavor.
Olive oil
Coats the surface so the meat browns and does not dry out under the heat.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp coating on the outside of the meat as it broils.

The step that matters

Broil thoroughly over a charcoal fire. Pork must be cooked through to be safe, but overcooking dries the lean meat. Cooking over steady, moderate heat and checking the centre helps the meat reach doneness while staying moist, and the crumb coating browns as it cooks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, cucumber, pepper, clove, allspice, thyme, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, cucumber, pepper, clove, allspice, thyme, vinegar. 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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