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To Fry Bread to Serve with Soup

Bread slices fried in butter until pale brown, served with soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 the stale bread into quarter-inch thick slices and remove the crust.

  2. Cut the bread into dice or desired shapes.

Fry and dry

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over gentle heat.

  2. Add the bread to the melted butter and cook, turning frequently, 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.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its dry, firm crumb holds its shape during frying and crisps rather than turning soggy.
Butter
Fat that conducts heat into the bread, promoting even golden browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking until only a very pale brown. Bread browns quickly once its surface sugars and starches heat up, and butter solids can scorch. Gentle heat and frequent turning keep the colour even and pale, avoiding a bitter, burnt edge.

“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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