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Pickled or Salted Pork

Cooked pickled pork is simmered, floured, fried, and finished with a sauce of flour, salt, pepper, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Pickled or Salted Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Slice pickled pork into ½ inch thick pieces.

  2. Place the pork in a skillet with 1 quart of water and cook for 1 hour.

  3. Once the water has evaporated, flour the pork.

  4. Fry the floured pork until brown.

  5. Remove the meat from the skillet.

Make the gravy

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of flour, a little salt, and pepper to the fat.

  2. Stir until smooth.

  3. Add milk or water until the sauce is thin enough.

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

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled pork
Provides the main meat and fat that flavour the pan and the gravy.
Flour
Coats the pork for browning and thickens the fat into a smooth gravy.
Milk or water
Thins the flour and fat mixture into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the fat. Flour must be stirred until smooth so it disperses evenly in the hot fat. Lumps form if it clumps, and they do not dissolve well once liquid is added.

“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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