Skip to main content
Main

Minced Pork

A minced pork dish cooked with apples, onions, gravy, mustard, and flour, served with toasted slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Minced Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat and skin from the pork leg and mince the meat finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Rub a stewpan with garlic and melt the butter in it.

  2. Add the chopped apples and onions, stirring over gentle heat for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Add the gravy or substitute mixture and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Mix in the mustard and flour, then stir the minced pork into the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer gently until heated throughout, but do not let it boil.

  2. Serve with toasted slices around the dish.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its savoury meat flavour.
Apples
Add sweetness and moisture that balance the rich pork.
Onions
Add savoury aroma and sweetness as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavour from the pan into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the minced pork.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and meaty flavour to form the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in minced meat and can make a flour-thickened sauce grainy or separate. Gentle heat keeps the pork tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, meat, butter, onion, pepper, mustard, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, meat, butter, onion, pepper, mustard, 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes