Why it works: Meat and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Barreled Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the pork into strips of uniform width from well-fatted hogs.
Pack and brine
Pack 190 pounds of meat into a barrel, layering without crowding.
Add 40 pounds of coarse salt and fill the barrel with full-strength brine or use 55 pounds of salt with cold water.
If making Extra Prime Pork, cut heavy untrimmed shoulders into three pieces and pack as above.
For Prime Mess Pork, use 190 pounds of meat in a mix of shoulder and side cuts, adding 20 pounds of coarse salt.
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.
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Meat + porktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,208 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pork
- Forms the meat that is cured and preserved in the barrel.
- Coarse salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during curing.
“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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