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Tomatoes and Bacon

A simple dish of bacon, tomato, and toasted bread served together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomatoes and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bacon

  1. Warm a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Lay trimmed rashers of bacon in the pan.

  3. Fry the bacon, turning several times.

  4. Set the bacon aside.

Fry the bread and tomatoes

  1. Cut rounds of bread and remove the crust.

  2. Fry the bread in the bacon fat.

  3. Slice the tomatoes.

  4. Fry the tomatoes, adding pepper and more fat if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve the bacon on the bread with the tomatoes around.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat for frying the bread and adds savory, browned flavor.
Bread
Forms the base that holds the bacon and tomatoes, and soaks up the bacon fat.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, and soften and lightly brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the tomatoes. Tomatoes release water and can stick or scorch in a dry pan. Adding a little fat and keeping the heat controlled helps them soften and brown rather than steam and burn.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Spinachfits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread. 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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