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Dry Salt Cure for Bacon

A method of curing bacon with coarse sea salt, sugar, black pepper, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dry Salt Cure for Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. In a wooden box, layer bacon with coarse sea salt, sugar, and black pepper. Add optional spices if desired.

  2. Cover the bacon completely with salt mixture.

  3. Seal the box and store in a cool place for several days.

Finish

  1. Rinse off excess salt before cooking.

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. 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

Bacon
The main cut that is salt-cured, firming its texture and concentrating its flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat as it cures.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds subtle sweetness and browning later.

The step that matters

Covering the bacon completely with the salt mixture. Any exposed meat can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt only preserves and seasons the surface it contacts. Full coverage keeps the cure consistent across the whole piece.

“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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