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Pork Cutlets, Grilled

Grilled pork cutlets served with a butter‑flour gravy and gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets, Grilled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and grill

  1. Trim off nearly all the fat from the cutlets and shape them uniformly.

  2. Season both sides with salt and pepper, then dip in warm butter.

  3. Coat the cutlets carefully with breadcrumbs.

  4. Grill over a clear fire for 20 minutes, turning 3 or 4 times.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the remaining butter, add flour, and stir over heat for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Add the gravy and vinegar, bring to a boil, season to taste, and stir in the gherkins.

  3. Arrange the cutlets in a circle on a hot dish, pour the sauce around, and 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pork + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pork cutlets
Lean meat forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a firm, tender texture when grilled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cutlets and helps the coating brown on the grill.
Flour
Cooked in melted butter, it thickens the sauce into a smooth, cohesive base.
Gravy or stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Gherkins
Chopped pieces add sharp, sour bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fat and savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. Stirring the flour over heat for 2-3 minutes cooks out its raw, pasty taste and lets it thicken the liquid evenly. Skipping this time leaves the sauce floury and dull, and adding the gravy too early can cause lumps.

“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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