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Apples and Bacon

A dish of sliced apples cooked in bacon fat, served with powdered sugar and bacon garnish, accompanied by bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apples and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the bacon

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

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

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

Fry and serve the apples

  1. Fry the sliced apples in the fat without coring or peeling them until clear and tender.

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

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

  4. 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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

Bacon
Supplies crisp texture and savory, salty flavor, and its fat cooks the apples.
Apples
Provide tender, sweet-tart fruit that softens and turns clear when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bacon fat used for frying the apples.
Powdered sugar
Adds light sweetness that contrasts with the salty bacon.

The step that matters

Fry the apples until clear and tender. Apples need enough heat and time to soften through without burning on the surface. Cooking in the bacon fat browns the surface, and the fruit's natural sugars caramelize, so too high heat can scorch them before the centers are tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, bread. 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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