Name: Toast-and-water
Ingredients: 1 slice stale bread or crust; 1 quart boiling water; small piece of orange or lemon peel (optional)

Why it works: Bread and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Toast-and-water

Ingredients

1 slice stale bread or crust
1 quart boiling water
small piece of orange or lemon peel (optional)

Directions

Toast the slice of stale bread or crust until golden brown, but not burnt.
Place the toasted bread in a jug.
Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the toast.
Cover the jug and let it sit to cool.
Add a small piece of orange or lemon peel for extra flavor, 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.

Bread + orangetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,084 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

Stale bread or crust: Toasting gives the bread a browned, nutty aroma that flavors the water.
Boiling water: Hot water extracts flavor and color from the toasted bread as it steeps.

“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.