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Dry-cured Pork

Pork cured by rubbing with a salt, sugar, and saltpeter mixture, then packed and stored for a week to ten days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dry-cured Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix the salt, sugar, and saltpeter thoroughly.

Rub and pack

  1. Rub the meat with one-third of the mixture every 3 days.

  2. Pack the meat in a barrel or tight box for curing.

  3. Transfer the meat between two barrels each time it is rubbed.

Finish curing

  1. After the last rubbing, let the meat cure for 1 week to 10 days.

  2. Store the meat in a cool, moist place for best results.

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 + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork
The main meat, which the cure penetrates to draw out moisture and preserve it.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and slows bacterial growth, which preserves it.
Granulated sugar
Balances the saltiness and softens the harsh flavor of the salt.
Saltpeter
Helps the meat keep its pink color and further inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.

The step that matters

Rubbing the meat every 3 days. Salt and cure must reach every part of the meat evenly; skipping or uneven rubbing leaves thick areas under-cured and open to spoilage.

“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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