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To Broil or Fry Pork Cutlets

A pork cutlet dish that can be broiled or fried, optionally breaded with egg, breadcrumbs, sage, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Broil or Fry Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut pork into ½ inch thick cutlets and trim them neatly.

  2. Remove excess fat if desired.

  3. Dredge cutlets with pepper or cayenne.

Cook

  1. Broil over a moderate fire (350°F/175°C) for 15-18 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with fine salt just before serving.

Bread

  1. Dip cutlets in egg.

  2. Coat cutlets with breadcrumbs mixed with minced sage.

  3. Flour the cutlets.

  4. Season the cutlets with salt and pepper before cooking.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy made in the pan or with sauce Robert.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of pork
Forms the main body of the dish; lean meat dries out if cooked too long.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the breadcrumbs stick to the cutlets.
Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when cooked.
Flour
Dries the surface so the egg adheres and helps the coating brown.
Minced sage
Adds a savoury, herbal aroma to the coating.

The step that matters

Broiling the cutlets. Pork loin is lean, so it can dry out under high heat if left too long. Checking for doneness near the minimum time helps keep the meat moist while the surface browns.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, egg, bread, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, egg, bread, flour. 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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