Name: Pork Cutlets, Fried
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon chopped sage; 1 teaspoon minced shallot; Salt and pepper to taste; 2 eggs; Finely grated bread crumbs

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Stir in the parsley, sage, and shallot; cook for a few minutes.
Add salt and pepper, then mix in the beaten eggs.
Dip the cutlets into the egg mixture, then coat with bread crumbs.
Let the cutlets stand for 10 minutes.
Melt some butter in a frying pan and fry the cutlets until thoroughly cooked.
Serve with a good brown sauce.

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.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

Swap the shallot

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

Shallotthe original
Carrotfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, sage, pepper, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.