the library

Bacon fat

Savory & ferment· savory bridge

What it is

Bacon fat is the rendered fat left after cooking cured, smoked pork belly.

What it tastes like

On the nose: phenolic, apple, almond. Among its measured molecules: 2,5-dimethylphenol, 3-methyl-1,2-cyclopentanedione, m-cresol, orthocresol, methyl butyrate.

Every one of its 16 compounds carries a paper the library can cite.

• acetic acidaromaacidreads as pungent (PubChem)Measured in 37 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.448 ± 0.09 in the finished bacon, having risen at curing (0.742 ± 0.13) and fallen through smoking (0.621 ± 0.24) — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M38 'Acetic Acid Glacial', CP column (mature stage))
• orthocresolaromaphenolreads as phenolic (PubChem)Measured in 5 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.362 ± 0.17 in the finished bacon and 0.487 ± 0.13 at the smoking stage; absent from the fresh and cured meat — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M6, CP column (mature stage))
• m-cresolaromaphenolreads as phenolic (PubChem)Measured in 3 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.696 ± 0.22 in the finished bacon and 0.599 ± 0.26 at the smoking stage; absent from the fresh and cured meat — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M7, CP column (mature stage))
• guaiacolaromaphenolreads as aromatic (PubChem)Measured in 15 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.567 ± 0.27 in the finished bacon and 0.735 ± 0.32 at the smoking stage; not detected in the fresh pork or the cured meat. The paper names guaiacol specifically when it says smoking led to the unique flavour of this bacon. — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M10, CP column (mature stage))
• phenolaromareads as sweet, tarry (PubChem)Measured in 9 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.869 ± 0.29 in the finished bacon and 1.136 ± 0.46 at the smoking stage — NOT DETECTED in the fresh pork or in the cured-but-unsmoked meat. The largest of the seven phenols the smoke puts into this bacon. — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M11, CP column (mature stage))
• hexanalaromaaldehydereads as sharp, aldehyde (PubChem)Measured in 87 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.892 ± 0.26 in the finished bacon. The ONE volatile the paper detects in the fresh pork at all (0.203 ± 0.03), rising more than seventeen-fold during curing (3.496 ± 0.85) before settling — the lipid-oxidation baseline that every stage of this process sits on. — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M30, CP column (mature stage))
• creosolaromaphenolMeasured in 7 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.415 ± 0.11 in the finished bacon and 0.522 ± 0.03 at the smoking stage; absent from the fresh and cured meat. The same compound the peated-whisky and smoked-tea nodes carry. — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M8 '4-Methyl Guaiacol', CP column (mature stage))
• 2,5-dimethylphenolaromaphenolMeasured in 1 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.209 ± 0.09 in the finished bacon — the only one of the seven smoke phenols that the paper detects in the MATURE product alone and not at the smoking stage — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M5, CP column (mature stage))
• furfuryl alcoholaromaalcoholreads as bitter (PubChem)Measured in 16 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.241 ± 0.01 in the finished bacon and 0.320 ± 0.09 at the smoking stage; absent from the fresh and cured meat — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M15, CP column (mature stage))
• furfuralaromafuranreads as almond (PubChem)Measured in 34 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.562 ± 0.01 in the finished bacon and 0.762 ± 0.21 at the smoking stage; absent from the fresh and cured meat — a wood-pyrolysis product arriving with the smoke rather than a Maillard product of the meat — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M32, CP column (mature stage))
• methyl hexanoatearomaesterMeasured in 11 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.614 ± 0.19 in the finished bacon, having been 0.718 ± 0.37 at curing and 0.790 ± 0.35 at smoking — the most stable ester across the whole process — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M24, CP column (mature stage))
• methyl butyratearomaesterreads as apple (PubChem)Measured in 6 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.375 ± 0.11 in the finished bacon and 0.460 ± 0.27 at the smoking stage, absent from the fresh and cured meat — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M27, CP column (mature stage))
• isoamyl alcoholaromaalcoholMeasured in 46 of 341 ingredients.cite

  1.643 ± 0.16 in the finished bacon — the largest volatile in the mature product after the ethanol left by the curing spirit. It peaks at the curing stage (5.757) and falls through smoking (0.83) before recovering, and is absent from the fresh pork. — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2 (Volatile compounds in four stages of Zhenba bacon by GC–MS), compound M17, CP column (mature stage))
• ethyl hexanoatearomaesterMeasured in 36 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.311 ± 0.01 in the finished bacon, down from 1.131 ± 0.29 at the curing stage — the curing esters are made before the smokehouse and partly lost in it — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M23 'Ethyl Caproate', CP column (mature stage))
• 3-methyl-1,2-cyclopentanedionearomaketoneMeasured in 2 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.329 ± 0.14 in the finished bacon and 0.449 ± 0.11 at the smoking stage — a cyclic diketone the paper reports as detected only in the smoked and mature stages — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M1, CP column (mature stage))
• 4-ethylguaiacolaromaphenolMeasured in 11 of 341 ingredients.cite

  0.221 ± 0.03 in the finished bacon and 0.279 ± 0.12 at the smoking stage; absent from the fresh and cured meat — Xi et al. 2021, Foods (Table 2, compound M9, CP column (mature stage))