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Bacon Toast

A toast topped with crisp bacon and fried tomato slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bacon Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon

  1. Cut the bacon into thin slices.

  2. Place the bacon in a sauté pan and cover with water; boil for a few seconds.

  3. Drain the bacon and fry in a pan until crisp and golden brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the brown bread and butter it well; trim to the size of the bacon.

  2. Place a slice of bacon on each slice of toast.

  3. Top each with a small slice of fried tomato and serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 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

Streaky bacon
Fat renders as it fries, making the bacon crisp and browned, and adds savoury flavour.
Brown bread
Provides a sturdy base that holds the bacon and tomato while staying crisp when toasted.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown and taste savoury.
Tomato
Adds moisture and a slight acidity that balances the rich bacon.

The step that matters

Boiling the bacon briefly before frying. Brief boiling in water softens the bacon and draws out some salt and fat, so it can then fry crisp and golden rather than tough or greasy. Drain it well so it browns instead of steaming.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. 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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