A bacon butty is bacon between two slices of buttered white bread. That is the entire dish, and Britain has strong and detailed opinions about every element of it.
The bacon
Back bacon, not streaky. British back bacon comes from the loin, so a rasher is broad and meaty with a strip of fat along one edge — quite unlike the thin crisp streaky bacon standard in America.
Whether it should be crisp or soft is the first point of disagreement. The traditional British preference is for bacon cooked through but still yielding, not shattered.
Smoked or unsmoked is the second. Unsmoked is milder and more common; smoked is more assertive and has its partisans.
The bread
Soft white bread, thickly buttered while warm so the butter melts into it. Not toasted, not a bagel, not sourdough. A soft white roll — a bap, barm, cob or breadcake depending on where you are — is equally acceptable, and the regional word for it is its own argument.
The butter is not optional and should be applied generously.
The sauce question
The central controversy, conducted in British kitchens, cafés and workplaces continuously:
- Tomato ketchup — sweeter, and the more popular choice by a narrow margin in most surveys.
- Brown sauce — HP is the standard. Tangy, malty and made with tamarind and dates, with no American equivalent. Regarded by its supporters as the only correct answer.
- Neither — a minority position held with some pride by people who want to taste the bacon.
Polls on this are run by newspapers with some regularity and settle nothing.
What it is for
The bacon butty has three well-established functions in British life:
- The hangover cure. The universally cited remedy, and there is some real basis for it — bacon is high in protein and salt, and the combination with carbohydrate is genuinely restorative.
- Breakfast on the move, from a café, a van at a market, a building site or a motorway services.
- The workplace peace offering. Arriving with a bag of bacon butties for a team is a recognised gesture, and it works.
The smell
Frying bacon produces several hundred distinct volatile compounds through the Maillard reaction, and the result is one of the most effective food aromas there is. Estate agents have recommended frying bacon before viewings for decades, and it is the reason a bacon van at an outdoor event does better trade than anything near it.
It is also the standard method for getting a household out of bed, and is more reliable than shouting.
The related butties
The butty is a broader category. A chip butty is chips in buttered bread; a crisp sandwich puts crisps in it. Both are entirely serious, and both are covered separately.