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Savoury Toasts

Savory toasts made with bread, butter, mustard, cheese, ham, and cayenne, then fried and baked until cheese melts.

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 ↓

Savoury Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into slices about ½ inch thick and 2½ inches square.

  2. Butter the tops thickly and spread a little mustard on them.

  3. Cover with a deep layer of grated cheese and ham, seasoned with cayenne.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in good butter without turning them in the pan.

  2. Lift them out and place in a Dutch oven for 3-4 minutes to melt the cheese.

  3. Serve very 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 + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the base that holds the topping and crisps when fried.
Grated cheese
Melts into a binding layer that gives the toast richness and savoury flavour.
Ham
Adds salty, meaty flavour and chew to the topping.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the bread in the frying pan.

The step that matters

Frying without turning. Turning the toasts can disturb the melting cheese topping and break the crust, so leaving them in the pan lets one side brown evenly while the top stays intact.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cheese, ham, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese, ham, pepper. 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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