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Breakfast

Breakfast

A breakfast plate of orange segments, crispy bacon, fried egg, sautéed spinach, buttered toast, served with 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

Prepare

  1. Peel and segment the orange.

Cook

  1. Cook the bacon until crispy.

  2. Fry the egg to your liking.

  3. Sauté the spinach until wilted.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread.

  2. Spread butter on the toast.

  3. Serve with 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. Orange + coffeetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

  3. Orange + spinachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat that crisps the bacon and adds savory, salty flavor.
Egg
Provides protein that sets when fried, adding richness and structure to the plate.
Spinach
Wilts when sautéed, losing volume and becoming tender.
Bread
Toasting browns the surface, adding crunch and a roasted aroma.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the toast, carrying flavor and softening the crumb.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, spinach, bread, butter, 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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