Name: Pork Chops, with Tomato Gravy
Ingredients: Pork chops; Powdered sage; Onion; Butter; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; Sugar; ½ cup juice from canned tomatoes; Hot water

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 Chops, with Tomato Gravy

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Trim off skin and fat from the pork chops.
Rub the chops with a mixture of powdered sage and onion.
Melt a small piece of butter in a frying pan and add the chops.
Cook the chops slowly until well done.
Place the chops on a hot dish.
Add a little hot water to the gravy in the pan.
Mix in 1 tablespoon of butter rolled in flour, pepper, salt, sugar, and the tomato juice.
Stew for 5 minutes and pour over the chops before serving.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Sweet potatofits better
Onionthe original

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