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Leicesteeshihe Spiced Bacon

A smoked bacon made from well‑fed pork, seasoned with sea salt, saltpetre, allspice, black pepper, treacle, and smoked over oak, beech, and peat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Leicesteeshihe Spiced Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork into pieces suitable for your salting tub.

  2. Rub both sides of the pork pieces with warmed treacle.

  3. Let the pork sit for a week, rubbing and turning it daily.

Cure

  1. Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, ground allspice, and black pepper.

  2. Rub the mixture on the fleshy side of the pork for a week, turning every other day for an additional two weeks.

Dry and smoke

  1. Dry the pork with cloths and suspend it in a draft, turning it end for end every third day.

  2. Once ready, coat the pork with bran or pollard and smoke it with oak and beech for two weeks.

  3. Finish smoking by adding peat to the fuel for one more week.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,194 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the pork, helping preserve the meat during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the cured colour and adds to the characteristic curing flavour of the bacon.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and helps the cure adhere and brown the surface of the pork.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, spiced aroma that defines the flavour of this bacon.
Black pepper
Adds pungent spice and aroma to the cured surface of the pork.
Oak and beech wood
Smoke from these woods deposits aromatic compounds and colour on the cured pork.

The step that matters

Turning and drying before smoking. Uneven drying leaves damp patches that can spoil or smoke unevenly. Turning the pork end for end while it hangs in a draft lets it dry and firm evenly before smoking.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork. 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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