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Dessert

Bread Gems

Bread Gems are baked bread crumb cakes made with milk, eggs, flour, butter, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Bread Gems

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Add the yolks to the soaked bread and milk mixture.

  4. Stir in the melted butter and salt, mixing well.

  5. Gradually add the flour and beat until smooth.

  6. Gently fold in the egg whites and baking powder.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into greased gem pans and bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating add lift, and yolks enrich the batter and help bind it.
Flour
Gives the batter structure as its starch sets during baking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and add body, giving the gems a soft, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the gems rise in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and softens the crumbs.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the egg whites and baking powder. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air beaten into the egg whites, which gives the gems their lift. Overmixing deflates the batter and yields dense gems.

“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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