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.
Prepare
Cut stale bread into cubes.
Bake
Place the cubes in a pan and brown them in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
Alternatively, butter the bread, cut it into cubes, and brown it in the oven.
Fry or skillet-cook
To fry, cook small cubes of stale bread in deep hot fat until brown.
Or, cook them in a little butter or fat in a hot skillet until brown.
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
- Stale bread
- Dry, firm bread cubes brown and crisp instead of steaming, giving croutons their structure and crunch.
- Butter
- Adds fat that helps the bread brown evenly and gives a richer flavour.
- Deep hot fat
- Conducts heat quickly to the bread, crisping the outside while keeping the inside tender.
The step that matters
Browning the bread cubes. Cubes that are too moist or crowded in the pan steam rather than brown, leaving croutons soft instead of crisp. Spreading them in a single layer lets surface moisture evaporate.
“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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