Why it works: Pork and sugar 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 ↓
Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the pork
Cut off the hams and head of the pig, leaving the spareribs.
Salt the pork with common salt and a little saltpetre.
Let the pork sit for 10 days.
Salt the pork again for 10-12 days.
Turn the pork daily after the second salting.
Prepare the pickle
Scrape the pork clean.
Rub a little salt on the pork.
Hang the pork up.
Scrape off any white froth from the pork.
Rub dry salt on the pork to prevent rusting.
Mix 1 pint of coarse sea salt, ¼ pound of saltpetre, and 2 pounds of coarse sugar to make the pickle.
Rub the pork with the pickle, skin side down.
Baste the pork daily for 14 days.
Smoke and dry
Hang the pork in wood smoke.
Hang the pork in a dry place, avoiding heat and sunlight.
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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Pork + sugartop 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
- Pork
- Provides the meat that is cured, then smoked and dried into bacon.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the cure and gives the meat its pink colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt and adds sweetness to the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Forms the dry salt base of the pickle that cures the pork.
The step that matters
Turning and basting the pork daily. Regular turning and basting keep the cure evenly distributed across the meat, so salt and curing agents penetrate uniformly and no area spoils or stays 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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