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Bread

German Croustades

Bread rounds filled with seasoned minced fowl in white sauce, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

German Croustades

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut bread into rounds and soak in clarified butter.

  2. Remove the inside of the rounds with a smaller cutter.

Fry and fill

  1. Dip the rounds in egg and fry in butter until golden brown.

  2. Drain the croustades and fill with the minced fowl.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the crisp case that holds the filling once hollowed out.
Clarified butter
Soaks into the bread, adding richness and helping it brown evenly.
Egg
Coats the rounds so they set and brown in the frying butter.

The step that matters

Frying the rounds until golden brown. Frying in hot butter browns the egg-coated bread through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavor and a crisp shell. Too low a heat soaks in grease and leaves the shell soft, while too high a heat burns the outside before the inside is crisp.

“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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