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Boiled Bacon

A dish of bacon boiled in water, then crisped with bread crumbs and served with cauliflower or Brussels sprouts and broad beans or green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bacon in warm water for 1-2 hours to reduce saltiness.

  2. Trim off any rusty parts and scrape the underside and rind clean.

Cook

  1. Place the bacon in a saucepan with cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  2. Reduce heat and let it simmer gently until fully cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bacon, strip off the skin, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Garnish with cauliflower or Brussels sprouts and serve with broad beans or green peas.

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. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + beanstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + cauliflowertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Provides the main meat and fat, which cooking renders and softens during simmering.
Bread crumbs
Sprinkled on top to add a light crumb texture against the soft, cooked bacon.

The step that matters

Soaking the bacon. Soaking in warm water draws out surface salt from the cured meat. Skipping or shortening it can leave the finished bacon too salty.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beans. 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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