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Pigs in a Blanket

Bacon-wrapped steak pieces simmered in tomato gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigs in a Blanket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim unnecessary skin from the steak and cut it into pieces about 3 inches square.

  2. Slice the bacon about ½ inch thick and dice the onion.

  3. Place a slice of bacon and a pinch of onion on each piece of meat, then roll and secure with toothpicks.

Brown and simmer

  1. Dip each roll in flour and brown nicely on both sides in a little hot lard.

  2. Add salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaf, clove, and tomatoes.

  3. Pour in enough boiling water to create gravy and simmer for 30 minutes.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the main meat body that becomes tender during the long, moist simmer.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seeps into the meat as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the rolls so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and body to the gravy as they break down.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the filling and gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the rolls in flour. Flour-dusted surfaces brown through the Maillard reaction, building colour and roasted flavour that later flavours the gravy. Pale, under-browned rolls produce a flatter-tasting sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, flour, pepper, thyme, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, pepper, thyme, clove. 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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