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Breakfast

Breakfast No. 2

A breakfast of oatmeal, bananas, cream gravy, zwieback toast, graham flour biscuits, apple sauce, toasted wafers, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Breakfast No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare oatmeal according to package instructions.

  2. Slice bananas and set aside.

  3. In a saucepan, heat cream to make gravy.

  4. Toast zwieback.

Make the gems

  1. Mix Graham flour and milk to make gems.

  2. Bake the gems until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve zwieback with oatmeal.

  2. Serve apple sauce.

  3. Serve toasted wafers on the side.

  4. Pour hot milk into cups for serving.

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. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the dish, giving a soft, starchy base.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft, moist texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smooth, silky body.
Graham flour
Provides structure for the gems and helps them set as they bake.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the gems brown lightly in the oven.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, cream, flour, milk, sugar, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, cream, flour, milk, sugar, sauce. 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.

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