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To Pickle Cheeks of Bacon and Hams

This recipe pickles pork cheeks with salt, sugar, saltpetre, pepper, and vinegar, then smokes them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Pickle Cheeks of Bacon and Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Mix the salt, sugar, saltpetre, and black pepper (if using) well.

  2. Rub the mixture thoroughly over 14 pounds of pork.

  3. Place the pork in a deep pickling pan with the rind downwards.

  4. Cover the pork with the salt and sugar mixture and let it sit for 3 days.

Pickle in vinegar

  1. After 3 days, discard the brine and pour a bottle of vinegar over the pork.

  2. Turn the pork in the brine daily for 1 month.

Smoke

  1. Drain the pork well, rub it with bran, and hang it high in a chimney over a wood fire to smoke for 1 month.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat's pink colour during long curing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and further preserves the pork in the brine.

The step that matters

Turning the pork in the brine daily. Turning keeps every surface in contact with the brine, so the cure penetrates evenly. Uneven contact can leave spoilage-prone areas under-salted over the month-long pickle.

“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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