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To Fry Pork

Fried pork slices served with a gravy made from flour, lard, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Fry Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry the pork

  1. Soak the pork in water if it is too salty to freshen.

  2. Drain the water and fry the pork slices until cooked through.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the pork and stir a spoonful of flour into the lard.

  2. Add enough milk or cream to thicken the mixture for gravy.

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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Pork
Provides the main meat, which cooks through in the frying fat.
Lard
Carries the heat for frying and forms the fat base for the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Milk or cream
Supplies the liquid that turns the flour mixture into a smooth gravy and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the lard. Flour must be stirred in evenly and cooked briefly in the fat before liquid is added. This coats the starch so it blends smoothly, avoids lumps, and removes the raw flour taste.

“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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