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To Broil or Fry Pork Cutlets

Pork cutlets seasoned with pepper, salt, and optional sage, then broiled or fried and served with gravy or sauce Robert.

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 Broil or Fry Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the pork cutlets into neat shapes and remove excess fat.

  2. Dredge the cutlets with pepper or cayenne.

Cook

  1. Broil the cutlets over a moderate fire for 15 to 18 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt just before serving.

  3. For a breaded version, dip cutlets in egg, then coat with bread crumbs mixed with minced sage.

  4. To fry, flour the cutlets and season with salt and pepper before cooking.

  5. 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

Pork loin cutlets
Provide the main meat, which cooks through quickly under direct heat.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the cutlet surface for the breaded version.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when the breaded version is cooked.
Flour
Dries the surface of the cutlets so they brown well when frying.

The step that matters

Broiling the cutlets. Pork loin is lean and dries out quickly under high heat, so cutlets cooked too long turn tough. Cook them just until done and keep the heat moderate.

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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