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 ↓
To Pickle Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cure
Pound the saltpetre, sugar, sal prunella, and a little common salt together.
Salt and drain the pork
Sprinkle the pork with salt and let it drain for 24 hours.
Pack and weight
Rub the mixture into the meat and pack it tightly in a tub.
Fill any gaps with salt and place a weight on top to keep the meat submerged.
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
- Saltpetre
- Cures the meat, giving it a pink colour and a cured flavour.
- Sugar
- Balances the salt and softens the sharpness of the cure.
- Sal prunella
- Fused saltpetre used as a curing agent that helps set the meat's colour.
- Pork
- The main meat that is cured and preserved by salt.
The step that matters
Packing and keeping the meat submerged. Any meat left above the brine or cure can spoil or dry out and turn grey. Filling gaps with salt and weighting the meat keeps every surface covered so the cure works evenly through the pork.
“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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