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Sweetened Fried Bread

A sweetened bread dish fried in butter and lard, served with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweetened Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Stir the eggs into the sweet milk.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the bread slices into the milk and egg mixture.

  2. Fry the dipped bread in a mixture of butter and lard until light brown.

  3. Sprinkle powdered sugar and cinnamon over the top before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and help the slices set and hold their shape.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread to moisten it and carries the egg into the coating.
Bread slices
Absorb the egg and milk mixture and form the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, rich flavor, and helps the surface brown.
Lard
Adds fat for frying and helps the surface brown evenly without burning as quickly.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a light finishing contrast to the fried bread.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread in a mixture of butter and lard until light brown.. Fry over moderate heat so the outside browns while the custard inside cooks through. Too much heat browns the surface before the egg sets, leaving the center wet.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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