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To Salt Down or Pickle Pork

A method of pickling pork using a brine of water, brown sugar, saltpetre, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,638 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

To Salt Down or Pickle Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Start

  1. Pickle the pork as soon as possible after it is cold, within 24 hours.

Make the brine

  1. Mix the brown sugar and saltpetre with the water.

  2. Gradually add coarse sea salt until the brine can float an egg.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes, skim off the scum, and let it cool.

Pack the barrel

  1. Cover the bottom of a packing barrel with coarse sea salt.

  2. Pack the pork closely in the barrel with the rind facing the sides, covering each layer with salt.

  3. Pour the cold brine over the packed pork.

  4. Place a round board slightly smaller than the barrel on top of the meat and weigh it down to keep it submerged.

Check the brine

  1. If the brine froths or looks reel, turn it off and scald it again, adding more salt before returning it to the meat.

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 + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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
Is the meat being preserved, and its rind and fat shape how it packs and holds up in the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, slowing spoilage during pickling.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt with mild sweetness and softens the sharp saltiness of the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and keeps its colour pink during the cure.

The step that matters

Keep the pork fully submerged under cold brine. Meat left exposed to air at the surface can spoil and dry out. A weighted board keeps every piece under the brine, and cold brine keeps the curing even and slows 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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