Name: Rolled Pork
Ingredients: 1 belly or spring piece of pork; coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons saltpetre; ½ pound coarse brown sugar; ground white pepper; broad tape

Why it works: Pork and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 791 recipes. Both carry methyl butyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Rolled Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Rub coarse sea salt over the pork and let it sit for 2 days.
Rub the pork with 2 handfuls of coarse sea salt, 2 teaspoons of saltpetre, and ½ pound of coarse brown sugar.
Sprinkle a little ground white pepper inside the pork.
Roll the pork tightly and bind it with broad tape.
Turn and rub the pork daily for 2 weeks.
Make a strong pickle, let it cool, then submerge the roll in the pickle.
Let it sit for 2 weeks, then hang it to dry in a cool place.

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.

Pork + white peppertop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together791 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).
Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,579 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + white peppertop 42% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together812 recipes