Fried Bacon
Cut the bacon very thin. Fry in its own fat and when crisp, place on brown paper to drain.
Three lines of instruction that assume a hot cast-iron pan on a coal range and a butcher who slices to order. The technique still holds; only the equipment and the paper have changed.
- "Very thin"The instruction to cut it at all suggests bacon bought as a slab and sliced at home rather than pre-sliced. Standard supermarket slices work; thinner slices render and crisp more evenly.
- Start the pan cold"Fry in its own fat" means add no grease at all -- the bacon supplies its own. Modern practice is to lay the slices in an unheated skillet over medium-low heat so the fat renders before the lean sets and curls; a very hot pan seizes the meat.
- Brown paperPlain grocery-bag or butcher's paper was a common drain in period kitchens. Modern printed and recycled paper is not a good choice for hot fat -- use paper towels or a wire rack set over a tray.
- Save the fatRendered bacon drippings were commonly kept and used for frying potatoes, greasing griddles and shortening biscuits. Strained and refrigerated, bacon fat keeps well.
- DonenessBacon crisps further as it cools, so pull it a shade before it looks finished. Crispness in the pan is well past any food-safety concern for cured, sliced pork.
- Oven methodFor more than a few slices, a single layer on a rimmed sheet at 400°F for 15–20 minutes gives flatter, more uniform results than a crowded skillet.
- YieldFigure two to three thin slices per person as a breakfast portion — roughly 1 lb for six.
Bacon in an American household book of this period often meant a home- or locally cured side of pork — though by this date large packers already supplied much of the bacon eaten, especially in towns and cities — salt- and smoke-preserved so it would keep through the year without ice, and correspondingly saltier and often much fattier than the wet-cured, nitrite-standardized product sold today. That is why the recipe bothers to specify frying in its own fat: a good side yielded more grease than the cook needed, and the drippings were themselves a valued product, kept in a crock by the stove for frying and baking. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in this same spirit of thrift instruction — short, unfussy entries aimed at a woman running a household without staff, where a paragraph on how to fry bacon properly was not considered too obvious to print.