Enchaud Périgourdin

Enchaud (also spelled anchaud) is among the oldest of the Périgord salt-cured pork preparations, a domestic charcuterie made in the days following the winter pig-killing, when the household preserved the year's pork. Boning a loin, studding it with garlic, salting it and then confiting it slowly in rendered fat let a prized cut keep for months sealed under its own fat in a jar — the same confit logic the region applies to duck and goose. For most of its history it was a home preparation rather than a commercial one, spreading into regional charcuterie only around the middle of the 20th century. It remains a fixture of the Périgord table, particularly as a cold festive dish around Christmas.

Cold, the slices hold together but yield at once, the pork pale and dense and threaded with soft garlic, tasting cleanly of salt and pork rather than spice. Clinging to each slice is a thin coat of pale amber jelly and a film of set fat that melts on the tongue. There is none of the dryness of a roast — the long fat-cooking leaves it silky and rich. Eaten on country bread with a smear of the jelly and a cornichon, it is robust, savoury and faintly sweet with garlic.

Confit is cooking and preserving in one. Held for hours at a low temperature in fat — well below a boil, around 80 to 90 degrees Celsius — the loin's collagen slowly breaks down into gelatin and the meat stays moist instead of drying out, while the fat conducts gentle, even heat without scorching. The salt rub draws out moisture and seasons throughout, and once the cooked meat is sealed under cooled fat the fat layer locks out air, so fat and salt together check spoilage. The jelly is gelatin from the connective tissue, set as the meat juices cool.