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Little Pigs in Blankets

Oysters wrapped in thin bacon slices, fried until crisp and served on toast with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Little Pigs in Blankets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the oysters with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Cut the bacon into very thin slices.

  3. Wrap one oyster in each slice of bacon and secure with toothpicks.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and add the wrapped oysters.

  2. Cook for about five minutes, until the bacon is crisp.

  3. Place on small slices of toast and serve immediately.

  4. Garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat bacon
Wraps the oysters and renders fat that crisps the outside while the oyster cooks.
Large oysters
The main ingredient, cooked briefly so the flesh stays tender and juicy.

The step that matters

Cook for about five minutes, until the bacon is crisp. Oysters overcook quickly and turn rubbery, so the bacon must crisp within a short time. Heating the pan well first helps the bacon render and brown before the oyster firms up.

“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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