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Bacon Olives

Bacon olives are sausage pieces wrapped in bacon, baked or fried, served with a piquante sauce of butter, onion, carrot, vinegar, stock, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bacon Olives

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bacon olives

  1. Divide the sausage into six portions and roll each in a slice of bacon.

  2. Tie each wrapped sausage with string.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Cover each with egg and breadcrumbs and fry in hot fat.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the onion and carrot in the melted butter until soft.

  3. Brown some flour in the pan.

  4. Add vinegar to the pan and let it evaporate.

  5. Stir in the stock and ketchup.

  6. Bring the sauce to a boil while stirring continuously.

Serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the bacon olives before serving.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Carrot + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Streaky bacon
Wraps the sausage, adding salty, smoky flavour and fat that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Sausage
Forms the filling, providing the savoury meat that the bacon wraps around.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the breadcrumbs stick to the outside of each roll.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot fat.
Onion and carrot
Build the sauce's aromatic sweetness and body as they soften in butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce, and evaporating it mellows the sharp edge.

The step that matters

Frying the breadcrumbed bacon olives. The egg and breadcrumb coating must be fully set and the fat hot enough to brown quickly; otherwise the coating absorbs grease, turns soggy and can fall off the roll.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, vinegar, ketchup, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, vinegar, ketchup, egg. 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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