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Egg and Bacon Pie to Eat Cold

A pie of eggs and bacon baked with thick cream, pepper, salt, and a cold paste, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Egg and Bacon Pie to Eat Cold

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the bacon in water overnight to remove salt.

  2. Lay the bacon in a dish.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the eggs with the thick cream, then add a little pepper and salt.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the bacon.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover with a good cold paste.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) a day before serving.

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. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pie a firm, sliceable custard texture.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the egg filling soft and smooth.
A few thin slices of bacon
Provides savoury, salty flavour and fat that seasons the filling.

The step that matters

Soaking the bacon overnight. Bacon is cured with salt, and soaking draws out excess salt so the filling does not taste overly salty after the eggs and cream set. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves the pie too salty.

“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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