Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Bacon

Cured pork seasoned with sage, bay leaves, white pepper, and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Cure

  1. Soak the pork in water for 12 hours, changing the water three times or as needed.

  2. Prepare a pickle with water, salt, salt prunelle, and sugar; submerge the pork for 16 days.

Spice and roll

  1. 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 with string every 3 inches.

Smoke

  1. 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
Forms the meat that becomes the bacon, turning firm and sliceable through curing.
Salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while seasoning it through the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness while helping the cure develop flavour.
Salt prunelle
Supplies the curing agent that sets the characteristic colour and preserves the meat.
Sage leaves
Adds herbal aroma to the spice layer rolled into the pork.

The step that matters

Keeping the pork fully submerged in the pickle for the whole 16 days. Any part exposed to air can spoil or cure unevenly, because the brine must penetrate evenly through the meat to preserve it safely.

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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes