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Pork Chops with Pickle

Pork chops cooked with onions and sweet pickles in a butter and drippings sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Chops with Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roll the pork chops in flour.

  2. Heat butter and drippings in a frying pan.

Brown and simmer

  1. Once hot, add the pork chops, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Brown one side, then turn the chops.

  3. Add the chopped onion and pickles to the pan, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Let this brown, then add enough warm water to almost cover the chops.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour or more.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Pork chops
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the chops so they brown well and help thicken the pan liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and a rich, savoury flavour.
Onion
Browns in the pan to add sweetness and aroma to the sauce.
Sweet pickles
Add sweetness and acidity that balance the rich pork and pan juices.

The step that matters

Brown the chops before adding water. Browning creates flavourful crust through the Maillard reaction. Adding water too early steams the chops instead, leaving the sauce flat and pale.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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