Skip to main content
Main

Salt Pork Fried

Fried slices of salt pork coated in flour, served with a milk and pepper gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the salt pork into thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in cold water or a mixture of milk and water for 1–2 hours.

  3. If short on time, pour boiling water over the slices and let them stand for a few minutes.

  4. Drain the slices.

Fry the pork

  1. Roll the drained slices in flour.

  2. Fry the floured slices until crisp.

  3. Roll the soaked slices in flour.

  4. Fry the floured slices as before.

Make the gravy

  1. Drain most of the fat from the pan.

  2. While the pan is hot, stir in 1–2 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Add about ½ pint of milk, a little pepper, and coarse sea salt if needed.

  4. Let the mixture boil.

  5. Pour the gravy into a serving 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. 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. Milk + peppertop 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

Salt pork
Provides the fat and savoury flavour that crisps when fried.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and crisp, and thickens the gravy with the pan fat.
Milk
Makes the gravy creamy and adds mild sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Fry the floured slices until crisp. Flour coating browns and crisps only when the fat is hot and the slices are dry enough; overcrowding or wet slices steam instead, leaving them soft and pale.

“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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes