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Bread Steak

Bread steak is slices of stale bread soaked in milk or cream, coated in eggs, fried, and served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Bread Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the slices of stale bread or toast in a little milk or cream until slightly softened.

  2. Sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Beat 1-2 eggs in a bowl and dip the soaked slices into the beaten eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a little butter in a frying pan.

  2. Place the egg-dipped slices in the hot frying pan and brown on both sides.

  3. Serve with brown sauce.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Stale bread
Forms the body of the dish; its dry, porous crumb soaks up milk and egg.
Eggs
Coat the soaked bread and set when fried, binding the slices and giving a golden crust.
Milk or cream
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the slices stay tender inside.
Butter
Fat for the frying pan that helps the egg coating brown and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Browning both sides in the hot pan. The pan must be hot enough to set and brown the egg coating quickly. If it is too cool, the egg soaks into the bread and the slices turn greasy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

“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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