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Salt Pork, Cream Gravy
(Southern Style) Salt Pork (sweet cured) Barley Flour Corn Starch White Pepper. 1 Tablespoon Bacon Fat 3 Tablespoons Melted Fat 2 Tablespoons Corn Starch 11/2 Cups Milk Salt Cut pork in half-inch slices, put in saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to boiling point; drain; add cold water and let stand a few minutes; mix 2 parts flour to 1 part cornstarch; season with the pepper. Roll pork in mixture and place in frying pan with the hot bacon fat. Pour off fat as it melts, and fry till reduced one-half.
Cook the cornstarch three minutes in the hot fat without browning; add the milk and salt and cook until smoothly thickened. Pour over the pork.
Serve for breakfast with baked potatoes and hot biscuit.
A breakfast dish of dredged salt pork with a cornstarch milk gravy built in the rendered fat. Two things decide whether it works: how thoroughly you draw the salt out first, and keeping the cornstarch pale.
- Buy the right pork"Sweet cured" salt pork indicates a milder, sugar-containing cure rather than smoked bacon or the fresh pork belly sold today. Look for salt pork in a block at the butcher counter or in the pork section; streaky fatback with some lean is closest to what the book assumes.
- The soak is the hingeBringing the slices to a boil, draining, then standing them in fresh cold water is a desalting step, not cooking. Skip it and the pork will be very salty, and the gravy, salted again at the end, worse. Taste a scrap of the drained pork before you decide how much salt goes in the milk.
- Barley flourBarley flour is still sold, usually in health-food aisles, and gives a soft, slightly sweet crust. All-purpose flour substitutes directly if you cannot find it. The dredge is 2 parts flour to 1 part cornstarch, seasoned with white pepper only.
- "Fry till reduced one-half"This most likely refers to the slices shrinking as their fat renders out rather than to any liquid. Allow roughly 10 to 15 minutes over medium heat, pouring off fat as it accumulates so the pork browns rather than deep-fries.
- The gravy fatThe 3 tablespoons of melted fat is presumably the pork fat you have just poured off. Return about that much to the pan and discard the rest, or the gravy will be greasy.
- Cornstarch, not a rouxCooking cornstarch three minutes in hot fat without browning keeps the gravy white; browning a starch also costs it some thickening power. Keep the heat moderate and add the milk in a stream while whisking. Two tablespoons to 1 1/2 cups milk yields a fairly thick, glossy gravy.
- Salt lastThe recipe lists salt with no quantity because the amount depends entirely on how much came out of the pork. It goes in with the milk, so add it sparingly and taste again once the gravy has thickened.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 cups of gravy. The recipe gives no quantity of pork, so how many it feeds depends on how much you cook.
Salt pork with milk gravy is old, plain Southern and Appalachian breakfast cooking — the same idea that turns up elsewhere as sawmill gravy or sop. What dates this particular version is the barley flour and cornstarch in place of wheat: household cookbooks of the World War I years pressed barley, corn, oat and rice flours on home cooks while wheat was directed to the army and to Europe. The cornstarch-in-hot-fat method for the gravy, rather than a wheat roux, may point the same way, though that is inference rather than evidence. The instruction to serve it with baked potatoes and hot biscuits marks it as a working breakfast rather than a company dish.