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Bacon and Apple Toast

A toasted bread topped with stewed apples and crispy bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 and Apple Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples, then slice them.

Make the stewed apples

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, add the apples, sugar, and water.

  2. Stew the apples quickly until tender.

Fry and assemble

  1. Fry the bread slices in a little butter until golden brown.

  2. Place the fried bread on a dish, cover with the stewed apples, and top with crispy bacon.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften into a stewed topping that gives the toast its fruity body and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise slightly as they stew.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the stewing apples and browns the bread when frying.
Bread slices
Form the crisp, golden base that holds the apples and bacon.
Crispy bacon
Adds salty, savoury crunch that contrasts with the sweet apples.

The step that matters

Stew the apples quickly until tender. Apples cooked too long turn to mush and release excess liquid, which soaks the bread and makes the toast soggy. Cooking them just until tender keeps their texture and keeps the base crisp.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, bread. 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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