Analyzing Britain's Bacon 'Butty'
LONDON, April 11, 2007— -- This month, after conducting 1,000 hours of research, a group of scientists at Leeds University shed light on an issue of international importance: how to make the perfect bacon sandwich.
The results of the study are particularly newsworthy in Britain, where the sandwich, known here as the "bacon buttie," is an integral part of the national cuisine.
The study was commissioned by the Danish Bacon and Meat Council, the U.K. subsidiary of the organization that represents all Danish pig producers -- Denmark supplies a quarter of all bacon consumed in Britain.
Dr. Graham Clayton, who led the research, said his team had set out to discover the best way to cook the bacon itself, as the other ingredients in a bacon buttie -- bread and sauce -- vary according to individual tastes.
Going into the study, Clayton hypothesized that the most important elements in defining the consumer's experience are texture and sound, rather than taste or smell. Clayton and his team experimented with grilling, frying and microwaving, attempting to achieve the exact kind of audible crispiness predicted to be a consumer favorite.
After tinkering with his measurements, Clayton tried out the results on actual human tasters. "We used a multiprong approach," Clayton said.
The results of the research, published on the Danish Bacon's Web site, came down to this equation: N = C + {fb(cm) . fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc . ta, in which N is the force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon, fb is the function of the bacon type, fc is the function of the condiment/filling type, Ts is the serving temperature, tc is the cooking time, ta is the time or duration of application of condiment/filling, cm is the cooking method, and C is the Newtons required to break uncooked bacon.
The equation accounts for all the variables in the sandwich-making process. However, according to Clayton, when it comes to the ideal bacon butty, what doesn't vary is the force exerted to take a bite (.4 newtons) or the volume of the sound that bite emits (.5 decibels).
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