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 ↓
A Word for Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Mix the salt, saltpetre, and sugar together.
Rub the mixture over the pork and place it in a tub.
Baste the liquid over the meat every 2-3 days until absorbed, for 3-6 weeks.
Smoke and cook
Smoke the bacon with black birch chips or hickory.
Broil the bacon for the best flavor.
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.
-
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
- Fine salt
- Draws moisture out of the pork and seasons the meat during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pork and gives the cured meat its pink colour.
- Sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds sweetness to the cured pork.
- Pork
- Provides the meat that is cured, smoked and cooked into bacon.
The step that matters
Basting the cure during the long curing period. The cure must be reapplied and absorbed evenly over several weeks. Uneven or skipped basting lets salt and curing agents penetrate unevenly, so parts of the pork may stay under-cured and spoil.
“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.
More bacon recipes
You might also like
Pork Cake107 recipes
Roast Pork82 recipes
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.