Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork made from various cuts, typically the belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central ingredient (e.g., the BLT sandwich), or as a flavouring or accent.
In Middle English the term bacon or bacoun referred to all pork in general. Before the Industrial Revolution, bacon was generally produced on local farms and in domestic kitchens. In the 1770s, John Harris opened the world's first commercial bacon processing plant in Calne, Wiltshire.