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Breakfast

A breakfast dish of bacon, egg, parsnip, toast, butter, cream, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Cook the components

  1. Cook the bacon until crispy.

  2. Fry the egg to your liking.

  3. Slice the parsnips and cook until tender.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread.

  2. Spread butter on the toast.

  3. Serve with cream and coffee.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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, giving crisp texture and salty, savoury flavour.
Egg
Adds richness; when fried, the white sets while the yolk stays soft and runny.
Parsnips
Soften as they cook, adding tender texture and a natural sweetness.
Bread
Provides the toasted base that holds the other toppings.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the toast brown and taste rich.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness that softens the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Slice the parsnips and cook until tender. Parsnips are dense, starchy roots. Slices of even thickness cook through at the same rate; uneven pieces leave some parts firm while others turn mushy.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

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