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Little Pigs in Blankets

Oysters wrapped in bacon served on toast and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 pieces.

  3. Wrap each oyster in a piece of bacon and secure with a skewer or toothpick.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Cook the wrapped oysters in the pan until the bacon is crispy.

  3. Place the cooked oysters on small pieces of toast and serve immediately, garnished 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

Large oysters
Provide the main seafood body that is cooked until just heated through.
Fat breakfast bacon
Fat renders in the pan, crisping the bacon and adding savoury, salty flavour to the oyster.

The step that matters

Cook the wrapped oysters in the pan until the bacon is crispy. Oysters overcook quickly and turn rubbery, while bacon needs enough heat to render its fat and crisp. Serving immediately keeps the oysters tender and the bacon crisp.

“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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