Skip to main content
Main

Pigs in Blanket

Bacon-wrapped oysters fried in butter.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pigs in Blanket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bacon strips in milk for 30 minutes, then drain.

  2. Dredge the soaked bacon in flour.

  3. Roll the oyster in egg, then in cracker meal.

  4. Wrap one strip of bacon around the oyster and secure it with a toothpick.

Cook

  1. In a skillet, heat a little butter and fry the wrapped oysters until brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Wraps the oyster and, as fat, crisps and browns in the pan.
Oyster
The main filling, wrapped in bacon and cooked until just done inside.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker meal sticks to the oyster.
Cracker meal
Forms a crisp, browned outer coating around the oyster.
Flour
Dries the soaked bacon surface so it browns rather than steams.
Butter
Adds fat to the skillet for frying and gives the exterior a golden browning.

The step that matters

Fry until brown over moderate heat. The bacon must crisp and brown while the oyster heats through. Too high a heat burns the bacon before the filling is warm, and too low a heat leaves the bacon pale and greasy.

“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

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes