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Breakfast

A Dainty Inexpensive Breakfast Dish

A skillet breakfast of bacon, corned beef, eggs, toast fingers, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

A Dainty Inexpensive Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the skillet

  1. Cut bacon into squares and fry in a pan.

  2. Add chopped corned beef to the bacon and season with salt, pepper, and butter. Cook thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs, being careful not to let them get too hard.

Serve

  1. Line a dish with toast fingers.

  2. Spread the mixture on top.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a soft, creamy texture when stirred in.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as it fries, which carries into the rest of the dish.
Corned beef
Provides the main savory meat flavor and body to the skillet mixture.
Toast fingers
Form a crisp base under the mixture that holds it in the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten eggs. Egg proteins set and tighten as they heat, so overcooking turns them hard and rubbery. Stir gently over low heat and remove from heat while the eggs still look slightly soft, as they will keep setting.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, egg. 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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