Skip to main content
Drink

Brown or White Bread Brewis

Bread Brew is a simple drink made by simmering bread crusts with water, milk, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Brown or White Bread Brewis

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using brown bread, soak the crusts in water overnight.

Simmer

  1. In the morning, add milk to the soaked bread and boil slowly.

  2. Add salt and butter, then let it simmer until tender.

  3. For white bread, skip the soaking and follow the same steps.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crusts
Provide the starch that softens and thickens into a mash when soaked and simmered.
Milk
Adds liquid, creaminess and a mild sweetness to the mash.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Milk scorches and sticks to the pan when heated too hard, so keep the heat gentle and stir. Slow heat lets the bread starch soften evenly into a smooth mash.

“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

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes