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 ↓
German Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the crust from the bread slices.
Soak the bread in milk.
Beat the eggs and pour them over the soaked bread.
Fry and serve
Fry the bread in butter until golden brown.
Sprinkle powdered sugar over the fritters before serving.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread
- Soaks up the milk and egg, forming a soft interior inside the fried crust.
- Milk
- Moistens the bread so it absorbs the egg mixture evenly.
- Eggs
- Bind the coating and set when fried, forming a custard-like layer around the bread.
- Butter
- Provides fat for frying and helps the surface brown.
The step that matters
Fry the bread in butter until golden brown. The egg coating needs time to set through the centre, while the butter's milk solids can darken and burn quickly. Moderate heat lets the inside set before the outside over-browns.
“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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