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Rayleigh Toast

A fried bread dish topped with a spiced mixture of onion, herbs, coconut, curry paste, sherry, stock, rabbit, ham, tongue, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Rayleigh Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the chopped onion until brown.

  2. Add mixed herbs, salt, pepper, grated coconut, curry paste, sherry, and stock.

  3. Boil while stirring, adding more stock as needed until the mixture drops easily from the spoon.

  4. Stir in the chopped rabbit, ham, tongue, and hard-boiled egg.

Serve

  1. Reheat the mixture and serve on fried bread cut into triangles.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + rabbittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 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

Cooked rabbit
Provides the main meaty body of the filling.
Ham and tongue
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour to the filling.
Curry paste
Supplies spice and aroma that flavour the whole mixture.
Stock
Adds moisture and body, and is reduced to a spoonable consistency.
Hard-boiled egg
Contributes richness and binds the chopped filling slightly.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture drops easily from the spoon. Boiling while stirring and adding stock in small amounts controls how much liquid evaporates. Too little reduction leaves the filling runny and soggy on the bread, while over-reduction makes it dry and stiff.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, sherry, rabbit, ham, egg, bread):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, sherry, rabbit, ham, egg, bread. 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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