Name: Common Diet
Ingredients: 1 pint of tea or coffee; 5 oz. of bread; 1 oz. of butter

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 ↓

Common Diet

Ingredients

1 pint of tea or coffee
5 oz. of bread
1 oz. of butter

Directions

Prepare 1 pint of tea or coffee.
Serve with 5 oz. of bread and 1 oz. of butter.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tea + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together383 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Tea + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together703 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Forms the base of the meal that the tea or coffee accompanies.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the bread, softening its flavor and texture.

“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.