Why it works: Pork and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Larding
Ingredients
Directions
Chill the pork in a cold place.
Remove the rind and cut the pork into slices slightly less than ¼ inch thick.
Cut the slices into strips about 2¼ inches long, called lardoons.
Insert one end of a lardoon into a larding needle.
Take a stitch in the meat ⅓ inch deep and ¾ inch wide, leaving the lardoon ends projecting equally.
Arrange lardoons in parallel rows, 1 inch apart, with alternate rows directly underneath each other.
Lard the upper surface of the meat with the grain.
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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Pork + meattop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,208 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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