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Bacon Roll with Forcemeat

A bacon roll stuffed with a forcemeat of breadcrumbs, herbs, and cream, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bacon Roll with Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add enough cream to the forcemeat to make it stick together.

Roll and cook

  1. Cover the bacon with the forcemeat and roll it up tightly.

  2. Dust the rolled bacon with flour.

  3. Heat butter in a pan and fry the bacon roll until golden brown.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fat bacon
Provides the wrapping and fat that flavours and moistens the roll as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat and give it a soft, absorbent body inside the roll.
Cream
Moistens the breadcrumbs so the forcemeat holds together and stays tender.
Flour
Dusting helps the outside brown evenly and form a light crust when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds richness and promotes browning on the outside.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat in butter browns the surface through Maillard reactions while the inside heats through. Too high a heat scorches the flour and butter before the roll is cooked.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, cream, flour, 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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