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Breakfast

A Sick Breakfast

A simple breakfast of toasted bread with butter, fruit or jelly, served with tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

A Sick Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the bread slices until lightly browned.

  2. Spread a pat of sweet butter on the toast.

Serve

  1. Serve with a small saucer of fruit or jelly.

  2. Brew a cup of nice tea.

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. Bread + teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together383 recipes

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

  3. Butter + teatop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the base, and toasting browns its surface for a crisp, aromatic bite.
Sweet butter
Adds fat and richness, melting into the warm toast for moisture and flavour.
Fruit or jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the rich butter.

“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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