Why it works: Sugar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
French Bacon for Larding
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Cut the bacon from the pig, leaving as little lean as possible.
Rub the bacon thoroughly with dried, powdered salt.
Layer the bacon in a shallow wooden trough, adding more salt around it.
Place a board on top with a heavy weight.
Let it cure for six weeks in a cool, dry cellar.
Hang
After six weeks, hang the bacon in a dry, airy place.
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.
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Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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
- Forms the meat that is cured and later used for larding.
- Dried, powdered salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the bacon during the long cure.
The step that matters
Rubbing and packing the bacon with salt. Salt must reach every part of the meat and be replenished around it, because uneven salting lets spoilage start in pockets that are not preserved. The weight on top presses out liquid and keeps the pieces in firm contact with the salt.
“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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