Karen AKA Kajikit wrote on 06 May 2007 in rec.food.cooking

> On Sun, 06 May 2007 13:26:15 -0500, zxcvbob >
> wrote:
>
> >All of the flavor notes of black pepper, except for the heat,
> >dissipate very quickly when pepper is ground -- it goes stale *much*
> >faster than other spices.
> >
> >If all you want is the sharp hot taste and the black specks, then
> >ground pepper from a can is just fine and there's nothing wrong with
> >that. Fresh ground pepper might even be distracting, say, if you put
> >too much on your fried eggs in the morning.
> >
> >If you want the spicy and citrusy flavors as well, you'll want to use
> >fresh ground pepper. It's like a totally different spice; you can
> >even put it in cookies and spice cakes and stuff like that.
> >
> >(course ground is somewhere in between)
>
> I use preground pepper in the stuff on the stove, and when I take it
> to the table I grind a little fresh pepper on top to add the extra
> flavour. Cooking seems to kill the spiciness of the fresh-ground stuff
> anyway. (and yes, I like the 'hotness' of pepper...)
>

Apparently you've never ground pepper over uncooked bacon then cooked it.
There's a world of difference.