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Savory Fried Bread

Fried bread made from stale bread soaked in vegetable stock, coated in egg and milk, fried in butter, served with tomato sauce or stewed tomatoes.

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 ↓

Savory Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut stale bread into ½-inch thick slices and shape like chops.

  2. Soak the slices in well-seasoned vegetable stock until nearly saturated, but do not let them become too soft.

  3. Dip the soaked slices in beaten eggs mixed with milk.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in butter over medium heat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce or a dish of stewed tomatoes.

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 + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale home-made bread
Forms the body of the dish; its dryness lets it absorb liquid without collapsing.
Vegetable stock
Seasons the bread and moistens it from within before frying.
Eggs
Bind the coating and set when fried, giving a firm golden crust.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats the bread evenly and adds tenderness.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the slices. Bread must be nearly saturated but not soft. Over-soaking makes the slices fall apart in the pan, because the starch structure breaks down when it holds too much liquid.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter. 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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