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Apples and Bacon

A dish of sautéed apples served with crisp bacon and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apples and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon

  1. Slice the breakfast bacon very thin and fry until it curls and is crisp.

  2. Remove the bacon and keep it warm over boiling water.

  3. Strain the fat back into the pan, adding a little butter.

Cook the apples

  1. Fry the sliced apples in the fat until they are clear and tender.

  2. Drain the apples from the grease and arrange them in the center of a warm dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Sift powdered sugar lightly over the apples and garnish with the bacon.

  2. Serve with brown or graham bread.

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 + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Breakfast bacon
Provides crisp texture and savory flavor, and its rendered fat cooks the apples.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bacon fat used for frying the apples.
Apples
Soften when fried, becoming tender and sweet-tasting as they cook.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a light sugary coating over the warm apples.

The step that matters

Fry the apples until clear and tender. Apples need enough heat and time to soften through without breaking apart or burning. Frying in the bacon fat over moderate heat cooks them evenly and lets their sugars brown lightly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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