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 ↓
Cherries on Fried Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the cherries
Remove the stalks from the cherries and warm them in a pan.
Add the sugar and stir over moderate heat.
Gradually pour in the hot water and cook for 15 minutes until the cherries are tender.
Fry and serve
Fry the bread in butter until golden.
Place the fried bread on a hot dish and pour the cherries over it.
Serve immediately.
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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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Kentish cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and soft, juicy texture once cooked.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cherries and helps form a syrup as they cook.
- Bread
- Forms the crisp, golden base that holds the cherries.
- Butter
- Browns the bread and adds richness to the fried base.
The step that matters
Frying the bread in butter until golden. Butter browns quickly and can burn before the bread is evenly golden, so heat should be moderate and the bread watched closely. Good browning gives the base flavour and a crisp surface that holds up under the warm cherries.
“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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