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Breakfast

Bread and Milk

A simple dish of diced bread soaked in boiled milk, served with sugar or salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread and Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into dice, removing the crust.

  2. Place the bread in a breakfast cup or small basin.

Serve

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread.

  2. Optionally, boil the bread in the milk for a few seconds before serving.

  3. Serve with sugar or salt to taste.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Soaks up the hot milk, softening into a spoonable, pudding-like texture.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the bread as it absorbs the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the mild flavour of the milk and bread.

The step that matters

Boil the milk and pour it over the bread. Milk that is hot enough softens the bread quickly. Scalding milk can form a skin and scorch, so bring it to a boil and pour it straight away.

“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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