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 ↓
Clear Soup with Croutons
Ingredients
Directions
Make the croutons
Cut stale bread into small squares.
Fry the bread squares in good dripping or butter until light brown.
Shake off excess fat using a colander.
Spread the croutons on tissue paper over a hot plate for 5 minutes.
Serve
Place the croutons in a tureen and pour in 1 quart of boiling consomme.
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).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Dried-out bread crisps and browns when fried, giving the croutons their texture.
- Good dripping or butter
- Fat conducts heat for frying, browning the bread and adding richness.
- Consomme
- Clear, well-flavoured broth that forms the body of the soup.
The step that matters
Frying the bread until light brown. Bread absorbs fat quickly, so it can turn greasy or dark if the fat is too cool or the pieces are left too long. Draining off excess fat keeps the croutons crisp.
“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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