Skip to main content
Main

Bread Steak

Bread steak is a fried bread sandwich with onion, served with potatoes and greens.

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

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 Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Coat the bread

  1. Dip the bread in milk, then in the beaten egg.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the bread and onion until nicely browned.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Serve with potatoes and greens.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wholemeal bread
Forms the base that soaks up the milk and egg coating.
Egg
Binds the coating to the bread and helps it brown in the pan.
Milk
Moistens the coating so the bread stays tender inside.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries alongside the bread.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, which promotes even browning of the bread.

The step that matters

Fry the bread and onion until nicely browned. Medium heat lets the coating brown through the Maillard reaction without burning. Too hot and the outside darkens before the inside heats, while too cool leaves the coating pale and soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes