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Salad

Bacon Dressing

A hot dressing made from bacon fat, vinegar, flour, and water, served over green salads.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,652 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bacon Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fat

  1. Warm the fat left from cooking bacon.

  2. If there is sediment, strain the fat through fine cheesecloth.

  3. Mix 2 parts fat with 1 part vinegar.

Thicken and serve

  1. Blend flour with water to make a smooth mixture.

  2. Thicken the dressing slightly with the flour mixture and cook for a few minutes to remove the raw taste of the flour.

  3. Serve the dressing hot over dandelion, cabbage, or other green salads.

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. Vinegar + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat from cooked bacon
Provides the main fat base and the smoky, savory flavor of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich bacon fat and balances its flavor.
Flour
Thickens the dressing when cooked, giving it body and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Cook the flour mixture for a few minutes. Flour thickens only when heated, and it tastes raw until its starch is cooked through. Stopping early leaves a pasty, floury flavor in the dressing.

“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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