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Minced Pork

A dish of finely minced pork cooked with apples, onions, butter, gravy, mustard, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 meat from the pork leg, mince finely, and discard fat and skin.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat a pan with garlic and melt the butter.

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

  3. Add gravy or substitute with calf's head liquor and vinegar.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, mustard, and flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir the minced pork into the sauce and simmer gently until heated through, without boiling.

  2. Serve with toasted sippets 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

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, providing the savoury meat base.
Apples
Add sweetness and acidity that balance the rich pork.
Onions
Soften over gentle heat, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the minced meat.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that cuts through the richness of the pork.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in minced meat and can make it dry and grainy. Gentle heat warms the pork through while keeping it tender and juicy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

More minced pork recipes

Cutlets 3Stew 3

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