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Fried Salt Pork
Cut in rather thin slices, and freshen by letting lie an hour or two in cold water or milk and water, roll in flour and fry till crisp (if in a hurry, pour boiling water on the slices, let stand a few minutes, drian, roll in flour and fry as before); drain off most of the grease from frying-pan, stir in while hot one or two table-spoons of flour, about half a pint new milk, a little pepper, and salt if not salt enough already from the meat; let boil and pour into gravy dish. This makes a nice white gravy when properly made.
A plain farmhouse breakfast dish that lives or dies on the soaking step and the gravy. Salt pork today is usually less aggressively cured than the barrel pork of the 1870s, so taste before you decide how long to freshen it.
- What salt pork isSalt-cured pork belly or fatback, sold in slabs near the bacon; it is cured rather than smoked, and not interchangeable with bacon or pancetta. Look for a piece with visible streaks of lean if you want something to chew on rather than pure fat.
- FresheningThe hour or two in cold water or milk-and-water pulls out surface salt. Modern salt pork often needs less; taste a fried scrap after 30 minutes and stop when it is seasoned rather than harsh. The recipe offers the boiling-water pour as a shortcut when in a hurry.
- Thin slicesThe recipe asks only for "rather thin" slices; roughly 1/8 to 1/4 inch, cut with a firm knife against a chilled slab, is a reasonable reading. Thicker slices are slower to crisp through.
- No added fatStart the floured slices in a dry heavy pan over medium heat and let them render their own grease. Too hot and the flour scorches before the fat is out.
- Half a pint of new milkOne cup. "New milk" is fresh whole milk, straight from the cow in the original context; whole milk is the equivalent. Warm it slightly and add it gradually to keep the gravy smooth.
- The gravy hingeStir the flour into the hot fat and keep the roux pale before the milk goes in. The point of this gravy is that it stays white, so no browning and no scorched flour.
- Salt lastThe drippings carry most of the seasoning. The recipe calls for a little pepper, then salt only if the meat has not already supplied enough; taste before adding any.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of pork; it makes about a cup of gravy, served alongside biscuits, boiled or fried potatoes, or cornbread.
Salt pork was the backbone of American rural cooking before refrigeration: a hog killed in cold weather, packed in salt in a barrel, and drawn on all year. Because the cure made the meat too salty to eat straight, freshening in water or milk was a routine first step in nineteenth-century kitchens, and the resulting milk gravy — a roux of drippings, flour and milk, sometimes called white gravy — turned a scrap of preserved fat into a full meal over potatoes or biscuits. Buckeye Cookery (1877), compiled from Ohio housekeepers' contributions, treats the dish as too ordinary to need much comment, which is itself telling; the writer's notes run to practical matters — that the gravy should come out white, the mark of a cook who did not let the flour catch, and a boiling-water shortcut for when the cook is in a hurry.