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Bacon and Apples

A dish of fried bacon and sweet apples served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Bacon and Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bacon thin and fry it until crisp.

  2. Transfer the bacon to a platter and keep it warm.

Cook the apples

  1. Fry thick slices of unpeeled sweet apples in the bacon fat until tender.

  2. Drain the apples and place them in the center of a hot platter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lay the fried bacon around the edge of the dish.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the apples and serve.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Its fat is rendered into the pan and carries flavour into the apples, while the crisp meat adds savoury contrast.
Sweet apples
Their natural sugars soften and caramelise in the hot fat, giving a tender, sweet-tart base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness on top of the apples, balancing the salty bacon.

The step that matters

Frying the apples until tender. Thick apple slices need enough heat and time in the bacon fat to soften through without burning on the outside. Too little heat leaves them raw in the centre, while too much browns the surface before the inside cooks.

“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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