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Bread Steaks

Bread slices dipped in milk and eggs, then fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bread Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the crust from the bread and cut it into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Dip each slice in milk briefly, then in the beaten eggs.

Fry

  1. Fry the bread in butter until brown.

  2. Optionally, roll the dipped bread in bread crumbs and fry in boiling fat.

  3. For variation, use diluted ketchup instead of milk for dipping.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the steak-shaped base that holds the egg coating while it fries.
Eggs
Bind the coating and set when fried, giving the slices a golden, firm outside.
Milk
Moistens the bread briefly so the egg coating adheres and the slice softens slightly.
Butter
Conducts heat and promotes browning and a rich flavour in the frying pan.

The step that matters

Fry the bread in butter until brown. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction at the surface, which needs enough heat. Dipped bread that is too wet or fried over low heat will steam and turn pale and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, butter, thyme, ketchup):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, thyme, ketchup. 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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