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Dessert

A Royal Dessert

A dessert made from stale cake slices topped with sweet cream, preserves, and optional fried bread soaked in milk and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

A Royal Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Pour a little sweet cream over the slices of stale cake.

  2. Fry the cake slices lightly in fresh butter in a smooth frying pan.

  3. Once done, place a layer of preserves over each slice of cake.

Make the bread version

  1. For the bread version, dip thin slices of bread into fresh milk.

  2. Dip the milk-soaked bread into the beaten eggs and fry in butter until light brown.

Serve

  1. Pour syrup over the fried bread and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale cake
Provides the base that soaks up cream and fries into a soft, tender slice.
Good sweet cream
Moistens the stale cake so it softens and regains some tenderness.
Fresh butter
Fat for frying that browns the cake and bread and adds rich flavour.
Preserves
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour in a layer over the fried cake.
2 eggs, well beaten
Coat the soaked bread, setting when fried to form a golden crust.

The step that matters

Frying the bread in butter until light brown. Egg-coated bread browns and sets quickly; too much heat scorches the outside before the custard-like egg centre cooks through, while too little leaves it pale and soggy.

“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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