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Fried Salt Pork

Fried slices of salt pork served with a gravy made from flour and milk.

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 ↓

Fried Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the salt pork into thin slices and soak in cold water or milk for 1–2 hours to freshen.

  2. If in a hurry, pour boiling water over the slices, let stand for a few minutes, then drain, roll in flour, and fry.

Fry the pork

  1. Roll the slices in flour and fry in a pan until crisp.

Make the gravy

  1. Drain most of the grease from the frying pan.

  2. While hot, stir in 1–2 tablespoons of flour and about ½ pint of new milk.

  3. Add a little pepper and coarse sea salt if needed, then let it boil.

  4. Pour the gravy into a dish.

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 + 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. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

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

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

Salt pork
Provides the main meat and fat that crisps in the pan and flavours the gravy.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and crisp, and thickens the gravy with the milk.
New milk
Mixed with flour and pan fat to form the body of the gravy.

The step that matters

Drain most of the grease before making the gravy. Leaving too much fat in the pan makes the gravy greasy and stops the flour and milk from blending into a smooth sauce. Keeping only a thin film of fat lets the flour cook and thicken properly.

“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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