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A Nice Breakfast Dish

A breakfast dish of cold fowl coated in beaten eggs and cracker dust, fried, served with bread and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Nice Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken

  1. Dip the slices of cold fowl in the beaten eggs, then coat with cracker dust.

  2. Fry the coated meat in butter or beef drippings until golden brown.

Make the bread and serve

  1. Cut stale bread into quarters, dip quickly in cold water, then in the beaten eggs, and dust with cracker dust.

  2. Fry the bread in the same way as the meat.

  3. Serve on the same or separate dishes, garnished with bits of parsley.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the cracker dust to the meat and bread so the coating holds during frying.
Cracker dust
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Butter or beef drippings
Fat that conducts heat for frying and adds flavour and browning to the coating.
Stale bread
Dry bread absorbs the quick water dip and egg, then fries to a crisp outside.

The step that matters

Dip the bread quickly in cold water. A brief dip moistens the dry bread's surface so the egg and crumbs stick, without soaking it. Longer soaking makes it soggy and causes the coating to slide off in the fat.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, butter, bread. 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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