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Dessert

Sweetened Fried Bread

Bread slices fried in butter and lard, sweetened with milk, eggs, powdered sugar, and cinnamon.

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

Sweetened Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Stir the eggs into the sweet milk.

  3. Dip the bread slices into the milk and egg mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the dipped bread in a mixture of butter and lard until light brown.

  2. Sprinkle powdered sugar and cinnamon over the top before serving.

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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and help the slices set and hold their shape when fried.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and softness to the slices.
Bread
Absorbs the egg and milk mixture, then crisps and browns in the hot fat.
Butter and lard
Fry the dipped bread, browning its surface and adding rich flavor.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a delicate finish on the fried slices.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread until light brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the soaked bread absorbs more fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar. 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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