Skip to main content
Main

Pigs in Blankets

Oysters wrapped in bacon, broiled and served on toast with celery, lemon, and celery leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pigs in Blankets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the oysters.

  2. Prepare as many strips of bacon as oysters.

Assemble

  1. Place a strip of bacon lengthwise on your left hand and lay an oyster across the upper end.

  2. Roll the bacon around the oyster and secure it with a toothpick.

Cook and serve

  1. Sprinkle with pepper, dip in melted butter, and broil.

  2. Serve on hot toast with celery, garnished with lemon and celery leaves.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the tender, briny filling that the bacon wraps around.
Breakfast bacon
Wraps the oysters and browns and crisps under the broiler, adding savory fat.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown during broiling.
Toast
Serves as a crisp base that soaks up drippings from the broiled bacon.

The step that matters

Rolling the bacon around the oyster. The bacon must wrap snugly and be secured with a toothpick so it stays closed while cooking. A loose wrap can open and let the oyster dry or leak under the broiler.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipes