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 ↓
Breakfast Dish
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat the egg and flour together in a bowl.
Add the sweet milk and salt, mixing well.
Fry
Dip slices of stale bread into the batter, covering both sides.
Fry the bread quickly on a hot griddle greased with sweet lard or butter.
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).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Egg
- Binds the batter and helps it set into a coating around the bread.
- Flour
- Thickens the batter so it clings to the bread and forms a coating.
- Sweet milk
- Thins the batter and adds moisture that softens the bread inside.
- Stale bread
- Absorbs the batter, becoming soft inside while the coating crisps outside.
- Sweet lard or butter
- Conducts heat and promotes browning of the coated bread surface.
The step that matters
Fry the bread quickly on a hot griddle. High heat sets the egg and flour coating and browns the surface quickly, before the bread soaks up too much batter and fat and turns greasy or soggy.
“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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