Name: Salt Pork with Milk Gravy
Ingredients: 1 pound salt or cured pork; 2 cups milk (skim milk is fine); 4 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons fat; Coarse sea salt (to taste)

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 ↓

Salt Pork with Milk Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

Cut the salt pork into thin slices.
If very salty, cover with hot water for 10 minutes.

Fry the pork

Score the rind of the slices and fry slowly until golden brown.

Make the gravy and serve

In the fat rendered from the pork, heat 2 tablespoons of fat and 4 tablespoons of flour.
Gradually add 2 cups of milk, stirring until thickened.
Serve the pork with the milk gravy alongside boiled or 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.

Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,386 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,187 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour: Thickens the milk into a smooth gravy as its starch swells when heated.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the gravy, which thickens with the flour and adds creaminess.
Salt pork: Provides savory, salty flavor, and its rendered fat carries flavor into the gravy.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk while stirring. Adding the milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps. Starch granules need steady stirring to hydrate and thicken the gravy smoothly as it heats.

“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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Salt Pork with Milk Gravy