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Chops, with Apples and Raisins

Pork loin chops seasoned and fried, served with apples, raisins, spinach, and apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chops, with Apples and Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim excess fat from the chops and sprinkle with black pepper, ground ginger, cayenne, and curry powder.

Fry

  1. Rub a frying pan with garlic, melt pork dripping in it, and fry the chops until browned.

  2. Flour the chops lightly before frying and ensure they are cooked through.

Serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix sultana raisins with a little gravy and a pinch of curry powder.

  2. Serve the chops on a bed of spinach with apple sauce on the side.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin chops
Provide the main meat, whose fat and lean portions cook to tender, browned pieces.
Pork dripping
Carries heat into the chops and adds fat that helps browning and flavour.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and soft chewy texture against the savoury pork.
Apple sauce
Adds sweetness and mild acidity that balance the spiced, rich pork.

The step that matters

Flour the chops lightly and cook them through. Light flour dusting helps the surface brown and form a crust, but too much flour can burn or turn gummy. Pork must reach a safe internal temperature, so checking doneness matters more than timing alone.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, clove, garlic, pork, apple, sauce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, clove, garlic, pork, apple, sauce. 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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