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To Pickle Pork

A method of preserving pork by curing it with saltpeter, sugar, sal-prunel, and salt, then storing it submerged in salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,638 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

To Pickle Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix and pound the saltpeter, coarse sugar, sal-prunel, and a little common salt until fine.

  2. Sprinkle the pork with common salt and let it drain for 24 hours.

Pack and store

  1. Rub the pork with the salt mixture and pack it tightly in a small deep tub.

  2. Fill the spaces with common salt and place large pebbles on top to keep the pork submerged in the pickle.

  3. Store in a cool place, away from air, for up to two years.

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 + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Sugar + hamtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Preserves the meat and gives it a firm texture and rosy colour during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and softens the harshness of the cure.
Pork
The meat being cured; its fat and lean tissue take on the preserving salts.

The step that matters

Keeping the pork submerged in the pickle. Any pork left above the brine is exposed to air, which invites spoilage and uneven curing. Packing the spaces with salt and weighing the meat down with pebbles keeps every piece covered.

“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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