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To Fry Bread to Serve with Soup

Bread slices fried in butter until pale brown, optionally soaked in cream or milk before frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Fry Bread to Serve with Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut stale bread into ¼-inch thick slices, remove the crust, and cut into dice or desired shapes.

  2. For snippets, soak the cut bread in thin cream or milk for an hour.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt butter in a frying pan over low heat.

  2. Add the bread and cook, turning gently, until it is a very pale brown.

  3. Drain the bread from the butter and dry it on a soft cloth or paper in front of a clear fire.

  4. Fry the soaked bread in fresh butter until delicately browned, then drain and serve hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 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 crumb fries crisply on the outside while staying tender inside.
Butter
Fat that conducts heat for frying and browns the bread, adding rich flavour.
Thin cream or milk
Soaking adds moisture and dairy proteins that brown and soften the bread.

The step that matters

Turning gently over low heat until pale brown. Butter browns quickly and the milk solids in it can scorch. Low heat and gentle turning let the bread colour evenly without burning or tearing.

“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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