Skip to main content
Main

Pigs in Blankets

Pigs in Blankets are strips of sirloin or round steak wrapped in bacon and onion, fried and simmered in a flour‑water gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigs in Blankets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the steak into 2‑inch strips.

  2. Place a thin slice of bacon and a very thin slice of onion on each strip.

  3. Roll up the strips and secure with a toothpick.

  4. Dredge the rolls in flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat bacon drippings in a skillet and fry the rolls until brown.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and cover with water.

  3. Cover the skillet and let simmer slowly for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy.

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. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin or round steak
Forms the wrapper that holds the filling and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky flavor that carries into the filling and the pan.
Flour
Coats the rolls to help them brown and later thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.
Bacon drippings
Fat for frying that promotes browning on the outside of the rolls.

The step that matters

Frying the rolls until brown. Browning the flour-coated surface creates flavor through the Maillard reaction. Frying too little leaves the rolls pale and bland before the long simmer.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes