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Pork Chops with Tomato Sauce

Pork chops simmered in a tomato-based sauce with onions, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Chops with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the pork chops and flatten them with a potato masher.

  2. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  3. Add the onion slices when the butter hisses.

Cook the chops

  1. Place the chops in the pan and fry slowly for 5 minutes.

  2. Increase the heat to brown the chops nicely.

  3. Remove the chops and place them in a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the onion from the gravy and return the gravy to the pan.

  2. Add boiling water, butter mixed with browned flour, pepper, salt, sugar, and tomato juice to the gravy.

  3. Boil sharply and pour over the 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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork chops
Are the main protein; flattening them promotes even cooking and tenderness.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the chops rather than running off.
Canned tomato juice
Provides the acidic, savoury base of the sauce and adds moisture.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomato juice, rounding out the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Boil sharply and pour over the chops. The flour must be fully cooked in the boiling sauce to thicken it smoothly and remove any raw starch taste; the sauce should be hot when poured so it stays hot on the plate.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, onion, flour, pepper, sugar):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, onion, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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