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 ↓
Croutons for Soup
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.
Cut the bread into slices 1 inch thick and remove the crust.
Butter the bread and cut it into cubes ½ inch square.
Brown the cubes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread
- Provides the structure that becomes crisp and golden when dried and toasted in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat that helps the cubes brown and gives them a rich flavour.
The step that matters
Brown the cubes in a 400°F (200°C) oven. Cubes that are cut unevenly or crowded on the pan will brown unevenly, with some pieces burning while others stay soft. Spreading them in a single layer lets hot air dry and brown every side.
“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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