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Fried Salt Pork

Fried salt pork is thinly sliced pork fried with flour, served with a thick sweet cream gravy and baked potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Fried Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork into thin slices and remove the skin.

  2. Soak the pork in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Heat the water until scalding hot, but do not boil.

  4. Remove the pork, drain it, and dip it in flour.

Fry the pork

  1. Heat a frying pan and fry the pork until golden brown on both sides.

  2. Transfer the cooked pork to a hot platter and drain excess drippings, leaving browned flour sediment.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add 1 cup of thick sweet cream to the pan and bring to a boil.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with a little cold milk and add it to the gravy.

  3. Boil until the flour is cooked, then season with pepper and salt.

  4. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat alongside 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 + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Very fat side pork
Its fat renders into the pan, frying the slices crisp and flavoring the drippings.
Flour
Coats the pork to brown well and thickens the drippings into gravy.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, softening its salty, savory edge.

The step that matters

Boil the flour until it is cooked. Raw flour tastes pasty and only thickens fully once its starch granules swell with heat. Boiling long enough cooks out the raw taste and gives the gravy a smooth, stable body.

“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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