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Bacon

A boiled pork dish served with optional green peas, beans, or cabbage, and accompanied by veal or boiled fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and beans 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 ↓

Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Soak and scrape the lean parts of the hog clean.

  2. Cut off any rind and boil gently until well done.

  3. Remove the rind.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with green peas, beans, or cabbage, or without.

  2. Always serve with a piece of veal or boiled fowl.

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. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

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

  2. Beans + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  3. Peas + cabbagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together392 recipes

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

  4. Peas + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Cabbage + vealtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat parts of hog
Fat for larding; adds richness and moisture to the lean meat.
Lean parts of hog
Main meat that becomes tender and firm as it boils.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beans, veal. 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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