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A Blade Bone of Pork, and Mashed Potatoes

A pork blade bone served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

A Blade Bone of Pork, and Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the blade bone of pork with salt and pepper.

  2. Broil or roast the blade bone until cooked through.

  3. A few minutes before removing from heat, baste with butter and sprinkle with chopped sage.

  4. Serve the blade bone over a dish of mashed potatoes.

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 + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Sage + potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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

Pork blade bone
Is the main protein, cooked through by broiling or roasting.
Butter
Basting adds fat and richness to the surface of the meat.
Mashed potatoes
Serves as the base the pork rests on, adding starch and a soft texture.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, butter, potato. 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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