Why it works: Pork and molasses work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 825 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Curing Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Pack the meat
Cut pork to fit snugly in the packing container.
Ensure the meat is free of animal heat before packing.
Sprinkle 8 pounds of salt evenly over each layer of meat.
Pour clear rain water over the packed meat until fully submerged.
Make the brine
Dissolve 4 ounces of saltpetre, 3 pints of molasses (or 5 pounds of brown sugar), and 7 pounds of salt in water.
If boiling the brine, boil it. Skim impurities from the boiled brine.
Let the boiled brine cool.
Cure
Pour the brine over the meat.
Pour the cooled brine over the meat.
Keep the meat covered with brine for 1 to 2 months, depending on thickness.
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.
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Pork + molassestop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together825 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pork
- The main meat that is preserved and cured through salt absorption.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it against spoilage.
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat's color and helps inhibit spoilage bacteria during curing.
- Molasses or brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and flavor, and balances the sharpness of the salt.
The step that matters
Keeping the meat fully submerged in brine. Any meat left above the brine surface can spoil, since salt cannot penetrate or protect it. Keeping every piece covered for the full curing period is what makes the preservation work evenly.
“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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