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Dessert

Cherries on Fried Bread

A dish of fried bread topped with a sweet cherry compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cherries on Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cherries

  1. In a saucepan, warm the cherries over moderate heat.

  2. Add 4 ounces of sugar and stir well.

  3. Gradually pour in ½ pint of hot water and cook for 15 minutes until cherries are tender.

Fry the bread

  1. Fry the bread in 1½ ounces of butter until golden.

Serve

  1. Place the fried bread on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the cherries over the bread.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 base that crisps in butter and soaks up the cherry juices.
Butter
Fat that fries the bread, giving it a golden, crisp surface and rich flavour.
Cherries
Main fruit, softening as they cook into a warm, juicy topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps form a syrup with their juices.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until golden. Bread that is pale or greasy will turn soggy under the warm cherries. Frying in butter over sufficient heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and a crisp barrier against moisture.

“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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