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Breakfast

Breakfast

A breakfast plate of orange segments, eggs, bacon, toast with butter, served with 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

  1. Peel and segment the orange.

  2. Cook the eggs to your preference.

  3. Fry the bacon until crispy.

  4. Toast the bread and spread with butter.

  5. 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. Orange + coffeetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Proteins set when heated, giving the plate its main structure and richness.
Bacon
Rendered fat and browning add savory flavor and crispness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and browns lightly on warm toast.
Orange
Its acidity and sweetness brighten the savory fat of the bacon and eggs.
Cream
Adds fat and softness to the coffee, mellowing its bitterness.

The step that matters

Fry the bacon until crispy. Medium heat lets the fat render out slowly so the strips crisp evenly. Too high a heat scorches the outside while the fat stays chewy inside.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe 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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