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Pork Steaks

Thinly sliced pork steaks seasoned with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and rubbed sage, then broiled or fried and served with a flour‑thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pork Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork steaks into thin slices.

  2. Season the sliced pork steaks with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and rubbed sage.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the seasoned steaks and butter them, or fry them in hot lard.

  2. Make a gravy by thickening with a little flour and pour it over the steaks.

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

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

  3. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork steaks
Main protein that provides the body of the dish and browns during cooking.
Lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat evenly and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Starch that thickens the gravy as it heats with the cooking liquid.
Rubbed sage
Herb that adds a savoury, aromatic flavour to the pork.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour must be fully mixed into the liquid so its starch granules separate and hydrate. Heating then swells them and thickens the gravy. Adding it in clumps leaves lumps that stay raw-tasting.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

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