Skip to main content
Main

Pork, Minced

A stew of minced pork with onions, apples, butter, flour, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pork, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork into very small dice.

  2. If you don't have gravy or good stock, boil the bones and trimmings for at least 1 hour. Strain and boil rapidly until reduced to 1 pint.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the onions until lightly browned.

  3. Add the apples and fry until tender but not broken.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and a good pinch of mustard. Stir and cook gently for 3 to 4 minutes.

  5. Add the stock and stir until boiling.

  6. Season to taste and boil gently for 5 minutes.

  7. Add the minced pork and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the stewpan stand for about 30 minutes just below simmering point.

  2. Serve with a border of rice, mashed potatoes, or toasted bread.

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

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast pork
Provides the meat that gives the stew its body and savoury flavour.
Onions
Soften and brown in the butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Apples
Cook until tender, adding gentle sweetness and a fruity note that balances the savoury meat.
Butter
Carries the onions and apples and adds richness to the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the stew, carrying flavour through the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and onion base before adding stock. Cooking the flour gently with the fats and aromatics removes its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly. Adding stock too quickly, or without stirring, can leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipes