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After-dinner Croutons

After-dinner croutons are toasted bread triangles served hot or cold with butter and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

After-dinner Croutons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut sandwich bread into slices ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut each slice into four small triangles.

Dry

  1. Dry the triangles in a 300°F (150°C) oven until they are delicately browned.

Serve

  1. Serve them hot or cold.

  2. For serving, spread a mixture of equal parts butter and creamy cheese on the croutons, adding a little minced parsley if desired.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sandwich bread
Forms the base that dries into a crisp, crunchy crouton.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor and softens the spread.
Creamy cheese
Adds richness and a tangy flavor to the spread.

The step that matters

Dry the triangles until delicately browned. Low, steady oven heat dries the bread into a crisp crunch. Browning happens quickly at the edges, so the croutons can scorch if left unchecked, and thin pieces brown faster than thick ones.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cheese):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese. 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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