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A soup made from stale bread, milk, onion, mace, peppercorns, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Break the stale bread into pieces and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Add the milk, onion, mace, and peppercorns in a cloth bag, then boil for a few minutes before removing the onion and spice bag.

Finish

  1. Mash the bread until smooth, then stir in the butter and salt.

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).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Stale bread
Absorbs the milk and swells, thickening the soup into a smooth, bready body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds a soft, creamy richness as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat that gives a rounder mouthfeel and richer flavour to the finished soup.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a mild savoury aroma and is removed before serving.
Mace
Infuses the milk with a warm, aromatic flavour and is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Boiling the milk. Milk can scorch on the base of the pan or boil over quickly. Keeping the heat controlled and stirring helps prevent sticking and burning, which would spoil the flavour of the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, onion, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, onion, butter. 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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