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 ↓
Potage Aux Croutons
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the bread into square slices, like dice.
Fry the bread in butter until golden.
Add the fried bread to a puree of haricots, peas, or lentils.
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).
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Bread + beanstop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together332 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + beanstop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,799 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the beans
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter):
- Lima beansfits better
- Pecansfits better
- Peasfits better
- Beansthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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