Why it works: Sugar and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Kentish Mode of Cutting Up and Curing a Pig
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
Set aside the hams and cheeks for separate curing.
Salt the feet, ears, tail, and eye-parts of the head for immediate eating.
Reserve the blade-bones, ends of the loins, and ribs for sausage meat.
Rub the pork with a mixture of saltpetre, sugar, and bay salt.
Pack and cure
Cover the bottom of a pickling tub with salt and pack the pork tightly, adding salt between layers.
Avoid adding water unless necessary; if the brine does not cover the meat in two weeks, boil a brine of salt, saltpetre, sugar, and bay salt, cool it, and pour it over the pork.
Place a board with a heavy stone on top of the meat to keep it submerged in the brine.
After 3 to 4 months, the pork will be ready to serve as pickled pork.
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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Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it in the brine.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured pork its characteristic pink colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.
- Bay salt
- Adds a coarse, mineral-rich salt that penetrates and seasons the pork during curing.
The step that matters
Keeping the pork submerged in brine. Any meat that rises above the brine can spoil, since exposed surfaces are not protected by salt and cure. The board and heavy stone hold the pork under the liquid throughout the long cure.
“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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