Why it works: Pork and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
To Make Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
Remove all inside fat from the pork and place it on a surface to drain blood.
Rub the pork well with good salt on both sides.
Let it sit for a week.
Cure
Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, coarse sugar, and common salt together.
Place the pork in a container that can hold the brine and rub the mixture onto the pork.
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.
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Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,579 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pork
- Is the meat being cured, so its texture and moisture change as salt penetrates it.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the cured meat and gives it its characteristic pink colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
The step that matters
Rubbing the pork with the cure mixture. The salt mixture must coat the meat evenly, because uneven coverage lets some areas stay unprotected and cure unevenly. Salt draws out moisture and slowly penetrates the meat, so thorough contact matters for a consistent result.
“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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