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Potatoes with Bacon

A stew of sliced potatoes, onions, and bacon simmered in stock or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Potatoes with Bacon

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook onions in a little butter until soft but not browned.

  2. Add diced bacon and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in thickly sliced potatoes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add bouquet garni.

  6. Moisten mixture with stock or water.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook without stirring for about 30 minutes until potatoes are tender.

  2. Remove bouquet garni.

  3. Serve potatoes in a vegetable dish.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and starchy as they cook in the liquid.
Streaky bacon
Releases fat that flavours the onions and potatoes and adds savoury, smoky taste.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook slowly, adding aroma and depth to the base.
Stock or water
Moistens the mixture so the potatoes can gently simmer and become tender.

The step that matters

Cook without stirring. Stirring breaks the thick potato slices apart and releases surface starch, leaving the dish mushy. Leaving it undisturbed lets the slices hold their shape while they cook through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, thyme, parsley, marjoram):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, thyme, parsley, marjoram. 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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