Skip to main content
Main

Pork, Belly Rolled and Boiled

A boiled pork belly rolled with pickled gherkins and spices, seasoned with saltpetre, mace, pepper, onions, bay leaves, parsley, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pork, Belly Rolled and Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Mix the powdered saltpetre and common salt.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture over the pork.

  3. Let the pork sit for 3 days.

  4. Wash the pork in cold water.

  5. Dry the pork with a cloth.

Stuff and roll

  1. Lay the pork skin side down.

  2. Remove the bones from the pork.

  3. Cover the inside of the pork with sliced pickled gherkins.

  4. Sprinkle a little powdered mace and pepper over the gherkins.

  5. Roll the meat tightly.

  6. Bind the rolled meat securely with tape.

Boil and press

  1. Place the rolled meat in a saucepan with the onions, bay leaves, parsley, and thyme.

  2. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  3. Skim the liquid carefully.

  4. Reduce the heat.

  5. Simmer gently for 30 minutes per pound.

  6. Place the cooked meat between two dishes with a weight on top.

  7. Let the meat cool completely 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork belly
Provides the fatty, tender meat that becomes succulent after long gentle simmering.
Common salt
Cures the pork by drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat through.
Powdered saltpetre
Helps the cure keep the meat's pink colour and adds a characteristic cured flavour.
Pickled gherkins
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the fatty pork.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. Once the liquid reaches a boil, lowering the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender. A hard boil toughens muscle proteins and can break the roll apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, onion, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, onion, clove, parsley, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes