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Bacon Egg-cap

A dish of bacon and eggs cooked in stock, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bacon Egg-cap

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bacon

  1. Cut the bacon into thin slices and stew them slowly, turning them over occasionally.

  2. Remove the bacon slices and add the stock to the grease in the pan.

Cook the eggs

  1. Break the eggs over the stock and return the bacon slices to the pan.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt. Cook over low heat.

  3. Use a red hot poker to scorch the top before serving.

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. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Bacon
Renders fat into the pan, which flavors the stock and eggs and keeps them from sticking.
Eggs
Set into the body of the dish as they cook, forming the cap.
Stock
Adds moisture and savory flavor, gently steaming the eggs as they set.

The step that matters

Use a red hot poker to scorch the top before serving. Direct high heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, giving colour and roasted flavor. Too little heat leaves the top pale and unbrowned, so the surface needs focused, intense heat.

“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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