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Breakfast

Early Breakfast

A simple breakfast of coffee or tea, toasted bread with butter, egg yolk, ham or sausage, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Early Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Brew 1 cup of black coffee or tea without milk or sugar.

  2. Toast 30-50 grams of white bread.

  3. Spread 20-30 grams of butter on the toasted bread.

Serve

  1. Serve with 1 egg yolk and a little fat ham or German sausage if desired.

  2. If needed, have 1 cup of broth with an egg yolk between breakfast and dinner.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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

White bread
Provides the base structure for the toast and absorbs the melted butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor across the toasted bread.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, giving the dish a creamy texture.
Broth
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the optional second course.

“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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