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Pork Cutlets with Mushroom Sauce

Pork cutlets marinated, breaded, fried, and served with a mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets with Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Trim the fat from the pork.

  2. Expose the end of the bone about 1 inch.

  3. Mix all ingredients together and rub the mixture over the cutlets.

  4. Let the cutlets marinate for 2 hours.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg.

  2. Coat each cutlet with fine bread crumbs.

  3. Heat fat in a frying pan.

  4. Fry the cutlets until pale brown, about 20 minutes.

  5. Drain the cutlets on a sieve before the fire.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. Sauté the mushrooms with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, tarragon vinegar, and lemon juice in butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Add stock to the sauce.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in marsala.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + tarragontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the marinade.
Button mushrooms
Soften in butter and give the sauce its bulk and earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the mushrooms cook and brown.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Marsala
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Frying the coated cutlets. Fry until only pale brown so the crumb coating crisps without burning, while the pork cooks through gently. Too hot a pan browns the crumbs before the centre is cooked.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, parsley, mushroom, nutmeg, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, parsley, mushroom, nutmeg, tarragon, vinegar. 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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