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To Pickle Pork

A method for preserving pork by brining it with saltpetre, sugar, sal-prunella, salt, spices, and covering with salt and pebbles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 331 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Pickle Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix and pound the saltpetre, sugar, sal-prunella, and a little common salt until fine.

Salt and pack the pork

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

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

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

  4. If kept from air, the pork will last for 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. Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Preserves the pork and gives it a characteristic pink colour.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Fat and lean pork
The meat being cured; its fat and lean parts set the texture of the finished pork.

The step that matters

Keep the pork fully submerged in the brine. Any meat left above the liquid can spoil and dry out, because air exposure allows microbial growth and oxidation. Weighting the pork with pebbles keeps every piece covered.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pork, pepper, allspice. 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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