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Stewed Pickled Pork and Tomatoes

A stew of salted pork, onions, tinned tomatoes, spices, sugar, chili vinegar, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Pickled Pork and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the salted pork in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chopped onions and tinned tomatoes.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, mace, nutmeg, sugar, and chili vinegar.

  4. Cover the stewpan and simmer for nearly two hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the grated breadcrumbs before serving.

  2. Transfer the stew to a hot dish 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

Salted pork
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour that the stew is built around.
Tinned tomatoes
Supply liquid and acidity that help break down the pork during slow simmering.
Grated breadcrumbs
Thicken the cooking liquid and give the stew a fuller body.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and rounds out the flavour.
Chopped onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften in the stew.

The step that matters

Simmering with the lid on. The pork needs a long, gentle simmer so its connective tissue softens and the meat becomes tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can dry out the liquid, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, tomato, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, tomato, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, vinegar. 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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