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Apple Pork

A pork roast baked with apples, sugar, lemon, and spices, then finished with fried apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Apple Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Stuff and roast

  1. Score the skin of the pork in a diamond pattern.

  2. Fill the cavity with chopped apples, sugar, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Place the pork in a large baking pan and surround it with whole apples, sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice.

  4. Add ½ cup of water to the pan and bake for 3 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Coat and fry

  1. Season the pork chops with salt, pepper, and sage.

  2. Dip the chops in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the chops until cooked through and place on a hot dish.

  4. Pour off some gravy into another pan for serving, if desired.

  5. Fry sliced apples until browned on one side, then carefully turn to finish cooking.

  6. Arrange the fried apples around the pork chops.

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. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  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
Main meat, cooked slowly so it stays moist and tender.
Apples
Soften as they cook, adding moisture and fruity sweetness to the roast and fried slices.
Sugar
Caramelizes and browns the apples while balancing their tartness.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apples and the rich pork.
Egg
Acts as a binder that holds the bread crumbs to the chops.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the chops when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the coated chops until cooked through. Pork must be fully cooked before serving, but breadcrumb coatings brown faster than the meat inside heats through. Moderate heat lets the inside cook evenly while the crumbs turn golden rather than burning.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, lemon, sugar, pepper, sage, 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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