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Salt Pork with Cream Gravy

Salt pork fried and topped with a cream gravy made from its own fat, flour, milk, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Salt Pork with Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the pork

  1. Slice the salt pork thinly and dip each slice in flour.

  2. Rub a hot frying pan with the pork rind and fry the slices until golden brown and crisp.

  3. Remove the pork to a hot platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat, add the remaining flour, and cook until bubbling.

  2. Gradually add the milk while stirring constantly and cook until thickened.

  3. Add the pepper and pour the gravy over the fried pork.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with baked potatoes.

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 crisp, savory fried meat and the rendered fat used for the gravy.
Flour
Coats the pork for browning and thickens the milk into a smooth gravy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream gravy, thickened by the flour and fat.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk while stirring constantly. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour suspended and smooth, preventing lumps as the starch swells and thickens the gravy.

“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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