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Pork Chops

Pork chops cooked in butter, seasoned with onion, sage, pepper, and salt, optionally breaded with eggs and breadcrumbs and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pork Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chops

  1. Trim the pork chops neatly.

  2. Heat a frying pan with a bit of butter.

  3. Once hot, add the chops and turn them often until browned, about 15 minutes.

  4. To check doneness, take one chop and taste it.

Season, coat and fry

  1. Season the cooked chop with minced onion, sage, pepper, and salt.

  2. Beat the eggs with a little salt.

  3. Mix in chopped herbs.

  4. Dip each chop in the egg mixture.

  5. Coat each chop with bread crumbs.

  6. Fry the breaded chops in hot lard or drippings until light brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork chops
Form the main protein; browning the surface adds savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the chops so the coating stays attached.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns when fried in hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor for the initial browning in the pan.
Lard or drippings
Conducts heat to crisp and brown the breaded coating evenly.

The step that matters

Fry the breaded chops in hot fat. Hot lard or drippings sets the egg and crumb coating quickly, so it crisps and browns rather than soaking up grease and becoming soggy or falling off.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, sage, pepper, egg, bread. 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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