Why it works: Sugar and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Wiltshire Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Sprinkle each flitch of bacon with salt.
Let the blood drain off for 24 hours.
Cure
Mix the sugar, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and coarse salt.
Rub the mixture well on the bacon.
Turn and wet the bacon daily for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the bacon to dry.
Smoke the bacon for 10 days.
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.
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Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,579 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured meat.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured pork its pink colour.
- Coarse salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
- Pork
- The meat being cured, drained, dried and smoked.
The step that matters
Turning and wetting the bacon daily. Salt penetrates the meat slowly and unevenly, so turning the pieces and reapplying the cure keeps the curing even. Skipping this can leave some areas under-cured and more open to spoilage.
“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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