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Cutlets, Pork, Grilled

Grilled pork cutlets served with a gherkin and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cutlets, Pork, Grilled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

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

  2. Season both sides with salt and pepper.

  3. Dip the cutlets in warm butter or fat, then coat carefully with breadcrumbs.

Grill and make the sauce

  1. Grill over a clear fire for about 20 minutes, turning three or four times.

  2. In a small saucepan, pour in the remaining fat, add the flour, and stir over the heat for a few minutes.

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

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets in a close 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
Provide the main meat, which cooks through over the fire while staying tender when trimmed of fat.
Butter or fat
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the breadcrumb coating brown as it grills.
Flour
Cooked in the fat to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Gravy or stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury flavour.
Gherkins
Add a sharp, tangy bite that contrasts with the rich sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Stirring the flour over heat for a few minutes cooks out its raw starch taste and lets it thicken evenly. Skipping this step leaves the sauce pasty and floury-tasting.

“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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