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Boiled Bacon

Bacon simmered in water, then topped with bread raspings and garnished with cauliflower or Brussels sprouts, served with broad beans or green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bacon

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Remove any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Simmer the bacon gently until thoroughly cooked, about 30 minutes for 1 lb.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bacon, strip off the skin, and sprinkle with bread raspings.

  2. Garnish with cauliflower or Brussels sprouts.

  3. Serve with broad beans or green peas if desired.

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. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + beanstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + cauliflowertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Provides the main meat, with fat that renders gently into the cooking water during simmering.
Bread raspings
Adds a crisp, dry topping that contrasts with the soft, moist bacon.

The step that matters

Simmer the bacon gently. A gentle simmer cooks the bacon through evenly and keeps it tender. A hard rolling boil can toughen the meat and make it dry at the edges.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, beans):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beans. 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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