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Pork Tenderloin

Pork tenderloin served on buttered toast with a thin milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the tenderloin open.

  2. Stew the tenderloin in water until nearly done.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a little butter in a skillet.

  2. Fry the tenderloin until light brown.

  3. Butter a slice of toast for each piece of meat.

  4. Place the meat on the toast, season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour a thin milk gravy over the meat and toast.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloin
Forms the main protein; stewing then frying gives a tender interior with a browned exterior.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface of the meat brown in the skillet.
Milk
Forms the base of the thin gravy, adding body and a mild, creamy flavour.
Bread
Acts as a soft base that soaks up the gravy under the meat.

The step that matters

Fry the tenderloin until light brown. Pork tenderloin is lean and dries out quickly, so stopping as soon as it is lightly browned keeps it moist; overcooking makes it tough.

“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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