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Pork Chops

Pork chops cooked in butter and seasoned with onion, sage, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Pork Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the pork chops neatly.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add a bit of butter.

  2. Once the butter is hot, add the chops and turn them often until browned all over, about 15 minutes.

Check and season

  1. To check for doneness, take one chop and taste it.

  2. If done, season with minced onion, powdered sage, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork chops
Provide the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Butter
Conducts heat into the pan and promotes browning and rich flavor on the surface.
Finely minced onion
Adds savory aroma and a mild sweetness as it is applied to the cooked chops.
Powdered sage
Adds earthy, aromatic flavor that complements the pork.

The step that matters

Checking doneness. Pork must be cooked through to be safe to eat. Tasting a single chop is an unreliable way to judge this, since the thickest part may still be undercooked even when the edges look browned.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, sage, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, sage, pepper. 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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