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Potatoes and Bacon

A stew of diced bacon, potatoes, and aromatics simmered in butter and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,517 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Potatoes and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bacon and cut it into half‑inch dice.

  2. Wash and peel the potatoes, then slice them into pieces about a quarter of an inch thick.

Make the stew

  1. Put the bacon into a stewpan with the butter and let it brown lightly.

  2. Add the flour and mix thoroughly, then add the hot water or stock and bouquet garni with the garlic.

  3. Cover the stewpan and bring the contents to a boil.

  4. Add the potatoes to the stewpan, cover it, and let them boil until cooked.

Serve

  1. Remove the seasoning and serve.

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. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Potato + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the stew and thicken its body as their starch softens during boiling.
Bacon
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that carries into the stewpan as it browns.
Butter or sweet dripping
Fat for browning the bacon and adds richness to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the browned bacon fat. Stirring the flour thoroughly into the fat cooks it and coats the bacon evenly; if it is left in lumps, it will not blend smoothly into the liquid and the stew can turn out uneven or lumpy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, garlic. 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.

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