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To Fry Pork Chops

Thin pork chops fried with lard, seasoned with pepper, salt, sage, onion, served with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Fry Pork Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork chops rather thin.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Dip the chops in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs mixed with sage and chopped onion before frying.

  3. Fry the pork chops until thoroughly cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with apple sauce, as no gravy is expected.

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. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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 meat that is cooked through by frying.
Lard
Conducts heat in the skillet and adds fat for frying and browning the coating.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the chops.
Sage
Adds a savory, herbal aroma to the coating.
Onion
Adds savory flavor and moisture to the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry the pork chops until thoroughly cooked. Pork must be cooked through to be safe to eat. Thin chops cook quickly, so checking that the centre is no longer pink helps avoid undercooking while the coating browns too fast.

Swap the apple

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

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

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