Name: Pork in Apple, Curry, or Digestive Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pound cold pork; 1 pint apple sauce, curry sauce, or digestive sauce; sage or thyme; parsley; 1 raw egg yolk (optional); made mustard (to taste); hot chutney (to taste); coarse sea salt (to taste); potato chips or tomato chips (for serving)

Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork in Apple, Curry, or Digestive Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Season the cold pork with sage, thyme, and parsley.
Slice or mince the pork, ensuring it is free from excess fat.
If using leftover gravy, heat it and warm the pork in it.

Combine and serve

Prepare your chosen sauce and combine it with the pork until well flavored.
Optionally, layer peas or vegetables on the dish, followed by a thin layer of meat and sauce until all ingredients are used.
Serve hot with a border of green vegetables, pea puree, or curried rice.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Sage + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,445 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

Cold pork: Provides the main meat, which is sliced or minced and gently warmed in the sauce.
Apple sauce: Adds moisture and a mildly sweet, acidic flavor that balances the savory pork.
Raw egg yolk: Can enrich the sauce, adding richness and body when stirred in.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, parsley, egg, mustard, potato chip):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, parsley, egg, mustard, potato chip. 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.