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Pork Tenderloins

Pork tenderloins cooked in lard and served with a gravy made from flour, butter, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloins

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Fry the tenderloins in a little lard, turning to cook through.

  2. Remove the tenderloins and keep them hot.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy by dredging flour into the hot fat, adding butter or lard if needed.

  2. Stir until browned, then add milk or cream and stir briskly.

  3. Pour the gravy over the tenderloins and serve with butter on a hot platter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy as it cooks in the hot fat.
Milk or cream
Adds liquid and richness, turning the browned flour into a creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the gravy and finishes the dish when served.
Pork tenderloins
Provide the main protein, cooked through in hot lard until browned.

The step that matters

Adding the milk or cream. Pour it in gradually while stirring briskly, because adding liquid to hot flour all at once can form lumps that are hard to smooth out.

“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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