Monday, June 23, 2008

Bacon Butties


I just have to say, that Bath University is home to the best bacon butties in the world. I would post this information on the TSR Wiki, however I am banned from the site. More on that later.

I was there on business (wow, it sounds great to say that!) last week. Anyway, the café known as Dol•cHe Vita (why do café franchises have such pretentious names?) serves a beautiful bit of grilled bacon in a fresh-from-the-oven French loaf that only costs 90p! I have a feeling I'll be eating a lot of these when I get there in September!

Having done a brief bit of research on the topic, it seems some underworked and overfed postgrads at Leeds have done a "serious study" into what makes a perfect bacon butty.
Apparently, the most important variable is the crunchiness of the bacon, and they have developed an equation to evaluate it:
N = C + {fb(cm) · fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc · ta
Where:
N=force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon
C=Newtons required to break uncooked bacon
fb=function of the bacon type
cm=cooking method
tc=cooking time
Ts=serving temperature
fc=function of the condiment/filling effect
ta=time or duration of application of condiment/filling
Now this looks very dubious to me. There are so many significant variables not considered - for example, the quality of the bread is completely ignored!

Obviously, tensile strength is not a measure of crispness, so the equation is bogus from the start. A bit of deeper searching, and I find out that our own Bath University has produced a study into the perception of crispness, and found it statistically analogous to hardness.

Clearly, the study is incomplete and a great deal of further research is required. I would like to take this opportunity to volunteer myself as a human guinea pig for any further live trials that may need to be conducted. I believe we must all make certain sacrifices for the benefit of society, and this shall be my contribution.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Ill have to track these down and try them. you know what they say about experimental evidence, repeatable = true :)

ill be going to bath this weekend! (foundation year - then electrical engineering)

sadly i cant find any contact details for you on blogger :( any hints?

Tom Long said...

Hey, I've updated my profile with a littel bit of contact info. I'm still enjoying the last of my holiday, but I can't wait to get to Bath. I'll be moving in on the 20th.
Are you in uni halls or private accommodation?