Name: Pork Tenderloin Roast
Ingredients: 1 cup bread crumbs; 1 teaspoon sage; 1 small onion, finely chopped; coarse sea salt, to taste; butter, to taste; a little milk; pepper, to taste; parsley, for garnish; apple jelly, for garnish

Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloin Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, sage, chopped onion, salt, butter, and a little milk.
Split the tenderloin lengthwise and rub with milk.
Season with pepper and salt.

Bake and serve

Bake for 1 hour.
Garnish with parsley and apple jelly before serving.

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.

Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Absorb the liquid and give the dressing body and structure.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and moisture in the dressing.
Onion: Adds savory flavor and aroma to the dressing.
Sage: Adds an herbal, earthy aroma that suits pork.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, onion, butter, milk, pepper, parsley):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, onion, butter, milk, pepper, parsley. 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.