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Fried Bacon

A skillet dish of fried bacon and potatoes served with bread and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and coffee work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Fried Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the bacon in a skillet until crispy.

  2. In the same skillet, add sliced potatoes and cook until golden brown.

  3. Serve with hard bread and coffee.

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. Potato + coffeetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + coffeetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat into the skillet and becomes crispy, adding salty, savory flavor.
Potatoes
Cook in the rendered bacon fat, browning on the outside while staying tender inside.

The step that matters

Cooking the potatoes in the bacon fat. Potatoes need enough heat and space to brown rather than steam. Crowding the pan or using low heat leaves them pale and soft, so the golden crust that comes from browning does not form.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, coffee):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, coffee. 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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