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Fried Pork Chops

Fried pork chops served with a gravy made from flour and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Fried Pork Chops

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the pork chops like mutton chops.

  2. Sprinkle the pork chops with powdered sage or summer savory, pepper, and coarse sea salt, if desired.

  3. Skim off some fat from the pan for gravy.

  4. Stir in 2 tablespoons of flour until free from lumps. Add 2 cups of sweet milk, boil, and serve in a gravy boat.

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

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

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Pork chops
Frying them is the main cooking step, and their fat provides the base for the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the pan fat and milk into a gravy by absorbing liquid as it heats.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid of the gravy, and simmering it thickens the sauce to a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the fat. Flour must be fully blended into the hot fat before the milk goes in, or it forms lumps that won't smooth out. Cooking the flour briefly in fat also removes its raw taste and helps the gravy thicken evenly.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, milk. 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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