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Fried Salt Pork

Fried salt pork is thinly sliced pork coated in flour and fried, optionally refreshed with boiling water, served with a milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Salt Pork

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork into thin slices.

  2. If the pork needs freshening, pour boiling water over it, let it stand briefly, drain, roll in flour, and cook again.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Roll the slices in flour and fry until crisp.

  2. For gravy, stir 1-2 tablespoons of flour into the frying pan after removing the meat.

  3. Add ½ pint of sweet milk and a dash of pepper; add a little salt if the pork is too fresh.

  4. Garnish with chipped celery leaves or parsley for added flavor.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 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 main meat and fat that flavours the dish and crisps when fried.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and crisp, and thickens the pan drippings into gravy.
Sweet milk
Dilutes the pan drippings and flour into a creamy, mild gravy.

The step that matters

Freshening the pork. Salt pork that is too salty or too fresh needs soaking or seasoning adjusted to taste; boiling water draws out surface salt, and the milk gravy is seasoned after the pork is cooked.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe 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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