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Spiced Bacon

A cured pork cut seasoned with sage, bay leaves, white pepper, and smoked after a 16‑day pickling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and sage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,527 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spiced Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Remove all bones from the pork and soak it in water for 12 hours, changing the water three times or as needed.

Cure

  1. Prepare a pickle with 1 gallon of water, 1 lb of common salt, 1 lb of saltpetre, and 1 lb of coarse sugar.

  2. Soak the pork in this mixture for 16 days.

Season, roll and smoke

  1. After 16 days, remove the pork, wipe it dry, and mix the shredded sage, bay leaves, and white pepper.

  2. Strew the mixture over the inside of the meat, roll it tightly, and tie it with string every 3 inches.

  3. Smoke the rolled pork for 2 weeks until well cured.

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. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Sage + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pork + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together791 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + sagetop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together538 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
The main meat; its fat and lean tissue become the cured, sliceable bacon.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured pork its characteristic pink colour.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavour to the seasoning rubbed into the meat.

The step that matters

Smoking the rolled pork for 2 weeks. Curing must be complete before smoking is finished; smoke adds flavour and helps preserve the meat, but the salt and saltpetre do the main preserving work, so the pork should be fully cured before it is considered done.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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