Skip to main content
Snack

English Monkey

A cheese bread made from stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, cheese, egg, salt, and cayenne, served over toasted crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

English Monkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk for 15 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Add the cheese to the melted butter and stir until melted.

  2. Add the soaked bread crumbs, beaten egg, and seasonings to the pan.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes and serve over toasted crackers.

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

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up milk to form a soft, thick body in the mixture.
Milk cheese
Melts into the butter to give the sauce its rich, creamy flavour and stretch.
Egg
Binds the mixture as it cooks, helping it thicken and hold together.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Add the soaked bread crumbs, beaten egg, and seasonings to the pan.. Egg proteins set with gentle heat and can curdle or turn grainy if the pan is too hot or the mixture is cooked too long. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly while the mixture thickens.

“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.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes