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Super-excellent Bacon

Bacon cured from pork with saltpetre, brown sugar, salt and treacle, then smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Super-excellent Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Rub the pork with saltpetre and brown sugar, covering all parts.

  2. Let it sit for several hours.

  3. Cover the meat with the mixture of coarse sea salt and common salt.

  4. After four days, add treacle.

  5. Turn the hams daily, basting with the pickle for one month.

Dry and smoke

  1. Hang the hams to drain overnight.

  2. Wrap them in brown paper.

  3. Send the wrapped hams to be smoked for one month.

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. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

  3. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

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

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

Pork
Forms the meat that the cure penetrates and firms as it dries.
Saltpetre
Preserves the pink colour of the cured meat and helps inhibit spoilage bacteria.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while slowing bacterial growth.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and dark colour to the cure and the surface of the meat.
Very brown sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and supports browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Turning and basting the hams daily. Salt and cure must penetrate evenly; missing turns lets the brine pool unevenly, so some areas cure too little or too much and spoilage can start.

“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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