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 ↓
Minced Meat with Egg Garnish
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
Toast the bread rounds and spread them with butter and Liebig Company's Extract of Meat.
Top each round with a pile of finely minced egg white.
Bake and serve
Place the assembled rounds in the oven to heat through at 400°F (200°C).
Just before serving, sprinkle with minced parsley.
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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Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,533 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
-
Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,032 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
-
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + meattop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,924 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread rounds
- Provide a crisp, toasted base that holds the toppings.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the surface brown.
- Liebig company's extract of meat
- Supplies concentrated meaty savoury flavour to the toast.
- Egg white
- Sets with heat to form a light, firm topping on the rounds.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, meat, egg, beef):
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
- Capersfits about as well
- Thymefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, meat, egg, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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