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Pork Tenderloin

Pork tenderloin slices sautéed with butter and onion, finished with a horseradish and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Cut the tenderloin crosswise into half-inch slices.

  2. In a chafing dish, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and add the chopped onion.

  3. Add the pork slices and cook thoroughly for about 10 minutes.

  4. Once cooked, add vinegar and reduce the heat.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt 2 ounces of butter and stir in the grated horseradish to make a sauce.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloin
Forms the main body of the dish; cooking it through sets its protein so it turns firm and opaque.
Butter
Carries fat for cooking the onion and pork and gives the sauce a rich, smooth base.
Horseradish
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the pan juices and balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Cook the pork thoroughly. Pork tenderloin is lean, so it can dry out quickly. Cooking it fully for the stated time, then reducing the heat, helps it stay safe to eat without turning tough.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, onion, sauce, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, onion, sauce, vinegar. 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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