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Breakfast

Breakfast

A simple breakfast of crispy bacon, sliced tomatoes, toasted bread with butter, served with cream and tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the bacon until crispy.

  2. Slice the tomatoes and serve them alongside the bacon.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread and spread butter on it.

  2. Serve with cream and tea.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + teatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Bread + teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together383 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat as it cooks and crisps, giving savoury flavour and crunch to the plate.
Tomatoes
Adds moisture and bright acidity that balances the rich, salty bacon.
Bread
Provides the base for the toast; toasting browns its surface and firms its texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting into the warm toast and softening its crust.

The step that matters

Cooking the bacon until crispy. Bacon can turn tough or greasy if cooked too briefly or too hot. Cooking slowly lets the fat render out so the meat becomes crisp rather than chewy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cream, tea):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream, tea. 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.

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