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Little Pigs in Blankets

Oysters wrapped in bacon, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, served on toast with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Little Pigs in Blankets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the oysters with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Cut the bacon into very thin slices.

  3. Wrap each oyster in a slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and add the wrapped oysters.

  2. Cook until the bacon is crispy.

  3. Serve on small pieces of toast and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. 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

Large oysters
Provide the central filling, cooking gently in their own juices inside the bacon.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that crisps around the oysters and browns the outside.
Slices of toast
Serve as a crisp base that soaks up the rendered bacon fat and juices.

The step that matters

Cook until the bacon is crispy. Oysters cook quickly and turn rubbery if overheated, so the bacon must crisp over moderate heat without the oysters overcooking. Watch the bacon closely and stop as soon as it is crisp.

“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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