Name: Breakfast
Ingredients: 2 ounces oatmeal or cornmeal; ½ pint milk; 4 ounces cooked beef, mutton, ham, or bacon, or 2 eggs; 6 ounces bread; ½ ounce butter; 1 pint tea or coffee; 1 ounce sugar; milk or cream

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 ↓

Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook 2 ounces of oatmeal or cornmeal in ½ pint of milk.
Alternatively, prepare 4 ounces of cooked meat or 2 eggs.
Serve with 6 ounces of bread and ½ ounce of butter.
Brew 1 pint of tea or coffee and sweeten with 1 ounce of sugar. Add milk or cream to taste.

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).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together738 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal or cornmeal: Provides the starchy base of the porridge, thickening as it cooks in the milk.
Milk: Cooks the cereal into a soft porridge and adds richness and mild sweetness.
Bread: Adds filling starch to the meal, served alongside the main dish.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour when spread on the bread.
Sugar: Sweetens the tea or coffee.

“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.