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To Cure Bacon

Bacon made by rubbing meat with salt, saltpetre and brown sugar, curing it for weeks, then smoking it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,866 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

To Cure Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the meat

  1. Mix the salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar well.

  2. Rub the mixture hard onto both sides of the meat.

Cure

  1. Let the meat cure for 4 to 5 weeks, turning it every 10 days.

  2. Expose the meat to the air for 30 minutes.

  3. Wash the meat in its own pickle.

  4. Dip the meat in water.

Dry, smoke and store

  1. Wipe the meat with a coarse cloth before smoking.

  2. Smoke the meat with hickory and decayed wood to create a smother.

  3. Store the meat in casks to allow it to make its own pickle.

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. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
The cut being preserved; salt and time firm its texture and deepen its flavour during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and slows spoilage by microbes, while seasoning it.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured meat its characteristic pink colour.
Brown sugar
Balances the harshness of the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the finished meat.

The step that matters

Let the meat cure for 4 to 5 weeks, turning it every 10 days. Salt penetrates meat slowly and unevenly. Turning the meat regularly lets the cure reach all surfaces, so no area is left under-salted and open to spoilage.

“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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