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Warmed Over Breakfast

A baked casserole of beef or veal, stale bread, milk, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Warmed Over Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread in enough fresh milk to cover it.

  2. Butter a small oval baking dish.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the soaked bread with the chopped meat and beaten egg.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and celery salt or onion juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

  2. Turn the dish onto a platter and garnish with bits of lemon and parsley.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the casserole.
Stale bread
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the mixture a soft, tender texture.
Fresh milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the casserole stays tender while baking.
Egg
Binds the meat and bread together and helps the casserole set when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. The dish must be baked long enough for the surface to brown and the egg to set, while not drying out the meat. Watching colour is the main guide.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, milk, egg, pepper, butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, milk, egg, pepper, butter, lemon. 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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