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French Fried Bread

French Fried Bread is a savory bread dish fried in butter and lard, served with lemon sauce and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into 3-inch square slices.

  2. Beat the eggs slightly in a bowl.

  3. Add sweet cream, pepper, and salt to the eggs and mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter and lard in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Dip each slice of bread into the egg mixture and fry until rich brown on both sides.

  3. Serve with lemon sauce and raisins.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Eggs
Bind the egg mixture and coat the bread, helping it set and brown in the pan.
Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the egg mixture and fries to a crisp, golden exterior.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture to the egg coating, giving a softer interior.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat and helps the coating brown evenly.

The step that matters

Dip each slice and fry until rich brown on both sides. The egg coating must soak in without making the bread soggy. Medium heat lets the egg set and the surface brown before the interior gets greasy or the coating burns.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, cream, pepper, butter, lemon, sauce. 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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