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Pork Steaks, Tenderloins and Spare Ribs

Broiled pork steaks, tenderloins, and spare ribs seasoned with pepper, sea salt, sage, onion juice, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pork Steaks, Tenderloins and Spare Ribs

Ingredients

Directions

Broil

  1. Broil the pork over a clear fire, turning every two minutes for 20 to 25 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Place the pork on a hot dish.

  2. Dust the pork with pepper, coarse sea salt, and powdered sage.

  3. Sprinkle the pork with onion juice and lemon juice.

  4. Add bits of butter to the pork.

  5. Cover the pork closely.

  6. Keep the pork over hot water for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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
Provides the meat that is cooked and served, browning over the fire as it broils.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist as it sits.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich pork and butter.
Onion juice
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the surface of the pork.

The step that matters

Keep the pork over hot water for 10 minutes before serving. Holding cooked meat gently warm after covering lets it finish and stay moist; with the lid on and water hot rather than boiling, the meat holds heat without drying out or overcooking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage, lemon, butter. 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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