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Pork, Loin of

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pork, Loin of

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove skins and cores from the kidneys and cut them into dice.

  2. Heat butter in a pan, fry the shallot slightly, then add parsley and kidneys. Cook gently for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the butter and use it instead of salad oil for the batter if preferred.

  4. Prepare the brown sauce, cool slightly, then mix it with the egg yolks while stirring continuously.

  5. Add the sauce to the kidneys, season to taste, and stir by the fire until the yolks thicken. Transfer to a plate to cool.

  6. Cut the caul into 3-inch squares. Make a smooth batter with flour, water, salt, and salad oil or butter, then fold in the whipped egg white.

  7. Once the mixture is cold, divide it into small portions, enclose them in caul pieces, dip in batter, and fry in hot fat until brown.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, shallot, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, shallot, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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