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Pork, Stewed with Vegetables and Fruit

A pork stew with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, sage, pepper, flour, store sauce, tomato chutney, salt, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pork, Stewed with Vegetables and Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Cut the pork into pieces as for haricot mutton and fry until browned.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, turnips, onions, and celery, then cover with warm water.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim off the fat, and add chopped sage and pepper.

Simmer

  1. Cook gently for 1 hour, then stir in brown flour, store sauce, tomato chutney, and salt.

  2. Boil for a few minutes, then simmer for another 30 minutes or more.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle currants over the meat before serving.

  2. Serve with green vegetables like sprouts or cabbage.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a rich, body-filled gravy.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they soften into the stew.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and firm texture that holds up during long cooking.
Currants
Add small bursts of sweetness and fruity tartness against the savory stew.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after bringing to a boil. Fat rises to the surface as the stew heats and brings greasiness and a loose, oily mouthfeel if left in. Skimming before adding the thickening and seasonings keeps the gravy clean-tasting and smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, celery, sage, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, celery, sage, pepper, flour. 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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