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Pork Relish

A savory pork relish made by frying salt pork, thickening the rendered fat with water, pepper, and flour, then adding diced pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the pork

  1. Fry the slices of salt pork until crisp.

  2. Remove the pork and pour a little water into the fat.

Make the gravy

  1. Season the water with pepper and sprinkle in a little flour.

  2. Cut the pork into small pieces and add it to the thickened 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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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
Renders fat for the gravy and adds savory, salty flavor as it crisps.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the flour into the water. Flour clumps if it lands in one spot. It needs to be dispersed in the liquid and heated so its starch swells evenly, giving a smooth, thickened 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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