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Pork Tenderloin

A pork tenderloin stuffed with bread crumbs, milk, butter, and seasonings, cooked in a self-basting pan with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tenderloin open.

  2. Prepare the dressing by moistening bread crumbs in milk and seasoning with salt, pepper, thyme, and butter.

  3. Place the dressing between the two pieces of tenderloin and tie them together.

Cook and serve

  1. In a self-basting pan, add water, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook the tenderloin for one hour.

  3. Serve the gravy that forms during cooking.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pork + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloin
Forms the main meat that is opened, stuffed, and cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk to form a moist dressing that fills the stuffing.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs so the dressing stays soft during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and the pan liquid.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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