Skip to main content
Main

Bakbecued Pork

A pork loin roasted with flour, pepper, salt, butter, and walnut ketchup, served with fried apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bakbecued Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the loin of pork in the oven without water.

  3. Sprinkle with flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Baste with butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook for 2 to 3 hours, or until very brown.

  2. Pour ½ cup walnut ketchup into the gravy.

  3. Serve with fried apples.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of pork
Main meat; long cooking breaks down connective tissue, leaving it tender.
Flour
Sprinkled on the meat to help the surface brown and to thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fat that carries heat over the surface, adding richness and aiding browning.
Walnut ketchup
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking until very brown. The pork is roasted without water for 2 to 3 hours, so it can dry out before it browns. Browning comes from Maillard reactions on the surface, which need dry heat and the sugars and amino acids in the meat and flour.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

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

More baked pork recipes

and Beans 27Chops 5with Vegetables 4Leg 3Loin 3Boston and beans 3 See all 4 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes