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Rolled Pork

A preserved pork roll seasoned with salt, sugar, pepper, and pickled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 791 recipes. Both carry methyl butyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Rolled Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Rub coarse sea salt over the pork and let it sit for 2 days.

  2. Rub the pork with 2 handfuls of coarse sea salt, 2 teaspoons of saltpetre, and ½ pound of coarse brown sugar.

  3. Sprinkle a little ground white pepper inside the pork.

  4. Roll the pork tightly and bind it with broad tape.

  5. Turn and rub the pork daily for 2 weeks.

Pickle and dry

  1. Make a strong pickle, let it cool, then submerge the roll in it.

  2. Let it sit in the pickle for 2 weeks, then hang it to dry in a cool place.

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 + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together791 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + white peppertop 42% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together812 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork belly or spring piece
Forms the main meat of the roll and carries the cure through its layers.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured pork keep its pink colour and resist spoilage during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat as it cures.
Coarse brown sugar
Balances the salt and adds sweetness and flavour to the cure.

The step that matters

Rolling and binding the pork tightly. A tight roll with even contact keeps the cure distributed and the shape consistent as the meat firms during curing and drying.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar. 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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