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 ↓
Green Pepper Toast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the toast
Slice the bread thin and remove the crusts.
Toast the bread on both sides until delicately brown.
Butter the toasted bread and keep it hot in the oven.
Make the pepper sauce
In a saucepan, heat the beef stock.
Rub together the butter and browned flour.
Stir the mixture into the beef stock.
When the sauce is thick, add salt to taste and the minced green peppers. Stir to combine.
Remove from heat.
Assemble and serve
Spread the mixture on the hot toast.
Return the toast to the oven until very hot and crisp.
Serve.
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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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,032 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Bread
- Forms the crisp base that holds the sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the toast brown and crisp.
- Beef stock
- Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a sauce.
- Browned flour
- Thickens the stock into a smooth, thick sauce.
- Green peppers
- Adds fresh, slightly sharp vegetable flavour to the sauce.
The step that matters
Thickening the sauce. Rubbing the butter and browned flour together and stirring them into hot stock needs care, because adding flour without enough mixing can leave lumps. The sauce should be fully thick before the peppers go in, so it spreads evenly on the toast.
“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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