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Fried Salt Pork

Fried slices of salt pork, coated in flour and fried, served with a milk and flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Fried Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the salt pork into thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in cold water or a mixture of milk and water for 1-2 hours to freshen.

  3. If in a hurry, pour boiling water over the slices, let stand for a few minutes, drain, then roll in flour and fry.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Roll the slices in flour.

  2. Fry the slices in a pan until crisp.

  3. Drain most of the grease from the frying pan.

  4. Stir in 1-2 tablespoons of flour while the pan is hot.

  5. Add about ½ pint of new milk, a little pepper, and salt if needed.

  6. Let the mixture boil and pour it into a gravy dish.

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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the main body and crisp fried texture of the dish, with its own salty flavour.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and crisp, and thickens the milk gravy.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the gravy after the fried pork is drained.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour while the pan is hot. Flour cooked briefly in the pork fat lets it absorb liquid evenly, so the milk thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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