Why it works: Pork and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,581 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
Salt Pork and Fried Apples
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the pork
Cut the salt pork into slices.
Fry the pork slowly in a deep frying pan until done.
Remove the pork and place it on a hot dish.
Fry the apples and serve
Wash, wipe, and slice the sour apples.
In the same frying pan, cook the apples in the pork gravy until tender.
Serve the apples hot on the platter with the pork.
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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Pork + appletop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,581 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Salt pork
- Renders fat into the pan, which fries the pork and gives flavour to the apples.
- Sour apples
- Hold their shape when cooked and add a tart contrast to the rich pork.
The step that matters
Cook the apples in the pork gravy until tender. Apples can scorch or stay firm if the heat is too high or they are cooked too briefly. Slow cooking in the rendered fat softens them evenly while the slices keep their shape.
“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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