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Bacon Pat

Oysters cooked in bacon fat, served hot with bacon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,211 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bacon Pat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the oysters, then drain them.

  2. Heat a skillet over high heat and add the bacon slices.

Cook

  1. Cook the bacon until crisp, turning often, then remove it from the skillet.

  2. Add the oysters to the hot bacon fat and toss until they are plumped and the edges curl.

  3. Be careful not to overcook the oysters.

  4. Remove the oysters from the fat and place them around a broiled beefsteak.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle the oysters with salt and paprika, then lay the crisp bacon on top.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve very hot.

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. Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,211 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Their delicate flesh cooks quickly in hot fat, becoming plump with curled edges when done.
Bacon
Renders fat for frying the oysters and its crisp pieces add salty, savory browning.

The step that matters

Add the oysters to the hot bacon fat and toss until plumped and edges curl. Oysters are delicate and overcook quickly, becoming tough and shrunken. Removing them as soon as the edges curl keeps them tender and juicy.

“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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