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Bread Steaks

Bread steaks are slices of wholemeal bread coated in egg, milk, herbs, pepper, salt and fried in butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk, herbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. Dip each slice of bread lightly in the egg mixture.

Fry

  1. Heat a little butter or oil in a pan.

  2. Fry the bread quickly until golden brown.

  3. You can cook the bread plain or cut it into any desired shape.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Wholemeal bread
Forms the main body of the steak, soaking up the egg mixture and browning in the pan.
Egg
Binds the coating and sets on the bread as it fries, giving a golden crust.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats the bread evenly and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Fry the bread quickly until golden brown. Dipped bread can turn soggy or burn if the pan is not hot enough or the cooking runs too long. A hot pan and short frying time set the egg coating quickly and brown the surface while the inside stays soft.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, pepper, 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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