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Bacon Sauce

A savory sauce made with bacon, onion, flour, vinegar, and water, served over potatoes and roasted meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bacon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the bacon slightly in a pan.

  2. Add the onion and sprinkle in the flour.

  3. Fry slowly until lightly browned.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the vinegar and water, stirring until boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour over previously cooked potatoes and serve with roast chicken or veal.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham or bacon
Renders fat and adds savory, smoky flavor to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Fry the flour and onion slowly until lightly browned. Cooking flour in fat slowly develops a nutty, toasted flavor and cooks out raw starch taste. Frying too hot can scorch the flour and make the sauce bitter, while undercooking leaves a pasty taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, vinegar, pepper. 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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