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Pork Cutlets

A dish of sliced pork cutlets cooked with onions, butter, flour, gravy, vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork into nice-sized cutlets and trim off most of the fat.

  2. Chop the onions.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the cutlets and chopped onions. Fry until light brown.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer gently for 5 to 7 minutes.

  3. Serve.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

What each ingredient does

Pork loin
Provides the meat for the cutlets, which are browned and then gently simmered until tender.
Butter
Fats the stewpan and browns the cutlets and onions, adding richness and flavour.
Onions
Soften and brown in the butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it simmers, giving the sauce body.
Gravy
Forms the sauce the cutlets simmer in, providing moisture and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Browning the cutlets and onions in butter builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flat taste, while overly dark frying can turn bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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