Skip to main content
Breakfast

Breakfast

A simple breakfast offering cocoa, bread with butter, milk with biscuit, bacon, boiled egg, dry toast, and brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Prepare a light early breakfast with either a cup of cocoa and a slice of bread with butter, or a glass of milk and a biscuit.

  2. Alternatively, serve a slice of fat fried bacon or a lightly-boiled egg with a slice of dry toast or brown bread with butter.

  3. Sip one cup of cocoa or milk and water after eating.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the warm drink.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the bread, carrying flavour and softening its dryness.
Egg
Lightly boiled, its soft set yolk adds richness and moisture to the plate.
Bacon
Fat renders during frying, adding savoury flavour and crisp browning.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes