Skip to main content
Breakfast

For Breakfasts

A breakfast dish of chopped leftover meats served with fried sliced potatoes, hot baked potatoes, and cold bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

For Breakfasts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop leftover meats into small pieces.

  2. Slice potatoes thinly.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter or oil in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Fry sliced potatoes until golden brown, seasoning with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Serve the fried potatoes with the chopped meats and hot baked potatoes.

  4. Offer cold bread on the side.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sliced potatoes
Frying them until golden brown gives crisp, browned edges and a soft interior.
Leftover meats
Supply the savoury, protein-rich core of the breakfast plate.
Butter or oil for frying
Conducts heat evenly across the skillet and helps the potatoes brown.

The step that matters

Fry sliced potatoes until golden brown. Thin slices need steady medium heat and enough space in the pan. Overcrowding or excess heat can burn the outside before the centre cooks, while too little heat leaves them pale and soggy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, bread. 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes