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French Bacon for Larding

Cured pork bacon with salt, sugar, optional saltpetre and pepper, cured for six weeks, then hung to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Bacon for Larding

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Cut the bacon from the pig, minimizing lean meat.

  2. Rub the bacon thoroughly with dried, powdered salt.

  3. Layer the bacon in a shallow wooden trough, adding more salt around it.

  4. Place a board on top with a heavy weight.

  5. Let it cure for six weeks in a cool, dry cellar.

Hang

  1. After six weeks, hang the bacon in a dry, airy place.

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. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

  3. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Pork
Provides the fatty belly meat that becomes the cured bacon.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the pork while preserving it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured meat.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage during curing.

The step that matters

Rubbing and layering the salt. Salt must coat the whole surface and surround the meat in the trough so curing is even. Gaps let spoilage start, and the salt draws out moisture that would otherwise dilute the cure.

“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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