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Fried Salt Pork

Fried salt pork with a flour-based gravy, optionally garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the salt pork into thin slices and soak in cold water to freshen.

  2. If in a hurry, pour boiling water over the pork, let it stand for a few minutes, then drain and dredge in flour again.

Fry the pork

  1. Dredge the slices in flour and fry until crisp.

  2. Drain most of the grease from the frying pan.

Make the gravy

  1. While hot, stir in 1 or 2 tablespoons of flour and about ½ pint of milk, along with pepper and salt if needed.

  2. Let the mixture boil and pour it into a gravy dish.

  3. Add finely chopped parsley for garnish, if desired.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Salt pork
Supplies the fat and salty meat flavour that the crisp slices and gravy are built on.
Flour
Coats the pork so it browns and crisps, and thickens the milk into gravy.
Milk
Liquid base that cooks with the pan drippings and flour into a smooth, creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Drain most of the grease before adding flour and milk. Flour only thickens properly when it is cooked in the fat, so leaving too much grease can make the gravy greasy and loose, while removing all of it leaves the flour dry and pasty. Keeping a measured amount of drippings gives a smooth, stable gravy.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, milk, pepper. 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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