Skip to main content
Breakfast

Choice Breakfast Bacon

A method of curing and smoking pork belly to produce bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Choice Breakfast Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the pork with coarse sea salt, sugar, minced shallots, saltpetre, black pepper, and bay leaves.

  2. Turn the meat every other day for one week.

  3. Add common salt and treacle to the pork.

  4. Rub the pork in daily for another week.

  5. Baste the meat.

  6. Turn the meat for one more week.

Dry and smoke

  1. Dry the meat with coarse cloths.

  2. Rub the meat all over with a mixture of equal parts pea meal and bran.

  3. Hang the meat to be smoked with oak chips or sawdust, along with dried fern and peat, for three weeks.

Store

  1. Store the bacon in a cool place, embedded in malt coom and pulverized charcoal for three months or longer.

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. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pork + shallottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Sugar + shallottop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Pork
Forms the meat that the cure penetrates and the smoke flavours.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour and slows bacterial growth during curing.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while it cures.
Coarse sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and softens its harshness.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, depth and a darker colour to the cured surface.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury aroma to the cure.

The step that matters

Turning the meat during the cure. Salt and curing agents move into meat slowly, so turning it regularly helps the cure penetrate evenly and prevents spoilage at the surface or uneven seasoning.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes