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Salt Pork, Country Style

Salt pork slices fried with apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,581 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Salt Pork, Country Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the fat salt pork into slices ⅓ inch thick.

  2. Cover the slices with boiling water, then drain.

  3. Dredge each slice in flour on both sides.

Fry the pork

  1. Place the slices in a well‑greased, hot frying pan.

  2. Cook slowly until richly browned, turning to brown both sides evenly.

  3. Drain on soft paper.

Fry the apples and serve

  1. Drain some fat from the pan and sauté peeled, cored, and sliced apples in it, turning often until browned.

  2. Arrange the pork on a serving platter and surround with the fried apples.

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 + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 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

Fat salt pork
Its fat renders in the pan and browns the slices while the lean meat stays savoury.
Flour
A light coating on the slices that helps them brown and crisp in the fat.
Apples
Their sugars caramelise in the pork fat, giving sweetness and browning against the salty meat.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until richly browned. Cooking over moderate heat lets the fat render out and the flour coating brown gradually. Too much heat can scorch the coating before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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