Bacon

This article is about the cured meat. For other uses, see Bacon (disambiguation).

Bacon and egg on toast, garnished with a strawberry

Cooked rasher of streaky bacon

Bacon is a cured meat prepared from a pig. It is first cured using large quantities of salt, either in a brine or in a dry packing; the result is fresh bacon (also green bacon). Fresh bacon may then be further dried for weeks or months (usually in cold air), boiled, or smoked. Fresh and dried bacon must be cooked before eating. Boiled bacon is ready to eat, as is some smoked bacon, but either may be cooked further before eating.

Quotes

• Nor wander from your selves with Tom
  Abroad to beg your bacon,
  • Anonymous, "Tom o’ Bedlam" (c. 1615)

• Seyned bacoun, and somtyme an ey or tweye.
  • Chaucer, "The Nun's Priest's Tale"

• The bacoun was nat fet for hem, I trowe,
  That som men han in Essex at Dunmowe.
  • Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath's Tale"

• Ethically, she couldn't cause the suffering of any living thing. Logically, bacon cheeseburgers were delicious.
  • Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows (2011)

• For us the pig's the means, while bacon is the end
  Providing gustatory heights to which we can ascend.
  • Laura Casey, "Piggin' out on bacon at S.F.'s BaconCamp", in San Jose Mercury News‎ (31 March 2009)

Metaphorical

• For winning wolde I al his lust endure,
  And make me a feyned appetyt;
  And yet in bacon hadde I never delyt.
  • Chaucer, "The Prologe of the Wyves Tale of Bathe"

• These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon 'gainst one another.
  • François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534), III, as translated by Thomas Urquhart (1653)