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Chine of Pork

A pork neck cured, fried onions, and simmered in gravy sauce with mushrooms, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chine of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Salt the chine of pork for 3 days.

  2. Rinse the pork.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onions in oil or batter until golden.

  2. Pour off the oil.

  3. Add gravy sauce, chopped mushrooms, vinegar, and mustard.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the pork with sauce.

  2. Serve the pork with the mixture.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Chine of pork
Salting for 3 days firms the meat and seasons it throughout before cooking.
Sliced onions
Frying until golden adds sweetness and browning to the sauce base.
Chopped mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and body to the sauce as it simmers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich gravy.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Once the gravy, mushrooms, vinegar and mustard are combined, bringing them to a boil lets the flavors meld and the sauce thicken, while the acidity mellows. Boiling too hard can make the sauce reduce too much or taste sharp.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sauce, mushroom, vinegar, mustard. 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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