Name: Bread Cutlets
Ingredients: thick slices of stale bread; custard; bread crumbs; butter; baked apples; currant jam; cider; sugar; cinnamon

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bread Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the stale bread slices in custard until just moistened.
Dip the soaked bread in bread crumbs.
Fry the bread in butter until golden brown.
Serve with baked apples topped with currant jam.
Prepare a sauce by boiling cider, sugar, and cinnamon together.

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.

Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,238 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, apple, cider, sugar, cinnamon):

Pearfits better
Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, apple, cider, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.