Why it works: Sugar and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
A Word for Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the pork
Mix the salt, saltpetre, and sugar together.
Rub the mixture over the pork.
Cure and smoke
Baste the liquid over the meat every 2-3 days until absorbed, for 3-6 weeks.
Smoke the bacon using black birch chips or hickory.
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.
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Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,579 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fine salt
- Draws moisture out of the pork and preserves the meat during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the cure keep its pink colour and inhibits harmful bacterial growth during curing.
- Sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds sweetness to the finished bacon.
- Pork
- The main meat that the cure penetrates and turns into bacon.
The step that matters
Basting until absorbed. The cure must fully penetrate the meat over the full 3-6 weeks; basting every 2-3 days lets the liquid soak in evenly, and skipping it can leave the centre under-cured.
“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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