Name: Steamed Bacon
Ingredients: bacon; cold water; broad beans; green peas

Steamed Bacon

Steamed bacon is cooked by soaking in cold water, scrubbing, steaming over boiling water, served with veal, fowl, broad beans or green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients

Why it works: Beans and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 949 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Steamed Bacon

Ingredients

bacon
cold water
broad beans
green peas

Directions

Prepare

Soak the bacon in cold water.
Scrape the outer rind and wash the bacon well.

Cook and serve

Steam the bacon over boiling water until tender.
Serve with veal, fowl, or by itself with broad beans or green peas.

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.

Beans + peastop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon: Is the main ingredient, becoming tender and savoury as it steams.
Broad beans: Add a fresh, green vegetable flavour that pairs with the bacon when served together.
Green peas: Add a sweet, fresh vegetable flavour that pairs with the bacon when served together.

“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.