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Fried Salt Pork

Fried salt pork served with a gravy made from flour, milk, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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 to freshen.

  3. Roll the slices in flour.

  4. Fry the slices until crisp.

  5. If needed, pour boiling water over the slices.

  6. Let the slices stand for a few minutes.

  7. Drain the slices.

  8. Roll the slices in flour again.

Make the gravy

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

  2. Stir in 1 or 2 tablespoons of flour while hot.

  3. Stir in ½ pint of milk.

  4. Add pepper and salt if necessary.

  5. Let the mixture boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy into a dish.

  2. Garnish with finely chopped parsley for a pleasant appearance.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and milk 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 fat and savoury flavour that the crisp slices and gravy are built on.
Flour
Coats the slices and thickens the hot pan fat into a gravy.
Milk
Mixed with the flour and pan fat to form the body of the gravy.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil. Flour needs to reach boiling in the liquid to cook out its raw taste and fully thicken the gravy, so it should be brought to a full boil.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, milk, pepper. 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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