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 ↓
Croutons for Tomato Soup
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
Cut stale bread into slices about 1 inch thick, then cut into small squares.
Brown
Dip each square into melted butter and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
Alternatively, butter each slice of bread on both sides, cut into squares, and then brown.
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).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Dries out and firms up, so the cubes hold their shape and crisp instead of going soggy.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
The step that matters
Browning the bread. Bread that is too moist or too thick will steam rather than crisp. Even small squares with a thin coat of butter brown evenly and stay crunchy when hot soup is added.
“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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