Why it works: Sugar and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Wiltshire Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Sprinkle each flitch of bacon with salt and let the blood drain off for 24 hours.
Mix the sugar, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and coarse salt together.
Rub the mixture well on the bacon, turning and wetting it daily for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the bacon to dry and then smoke it for 10 days.
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 + porktop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,579 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat's pink color and helps inhibit spoilage during the long cure.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the pork during the cure.
- Pork
- Fatty flitches of meat that are cured, dried and smoked into bacon.
The step that matters
Rubbing and turning the cure daily for a month. The cure must reach every part of the meat evenly. Skipping turns or leaving spots uncovered lets some areas stay underseasoned or spoil, so the salt and saltpetre need steady, repeated contact.
“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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