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Fried Bacon or Salt Pork

Fried bacon or salt pork soaked in milk, coated in flour, fried, and served with a milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Fried Bacon or Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the slices in milk for 20 minutes to 1-2 hours.

  2. Heat a pan over medium heat.

  3. Fry a slice that has not been soaked in milk to grease the pan.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll the other pieces in flour and fry until golden brown.

  2. Use the remaining milk to make a gravy.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Bacon or salt pork
Provides the meat and fat that the dish is built around, and fries into the main portion.
Milk
Soaks the slices to soften them and moisten the meat before frying.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown into a golden crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the floured pieces until golden brown. Flour coating browns quickly in hot fat, so the pan must stay at a steady medium heat. Too hot and the coating burns before the inside cooks; too cool and it absorbs grease and turns soggy.

“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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