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Savoury Toasts

A toasted bread topped with mustard, cheese, ham, and cayenne, fried and finished in a Dutch oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Savoury Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into slices about ½ inch thick and 2½ inches square.

  2. Butter the tops of the bread slices thickly and spread a little mustard on them.

  3. Cover the mustard with a deep layer of grated cheese and minced ham seasoned with cayenne.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the toasts in good butter without turning them in the pan.

  2. Lift them out and place them in a Dutch oven for 3 minutes to melt the cheese.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

English cheese
Melts into a rich, savoury layer that binds the topping to the bread.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a chewy texture to the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the bread brown and crisp when fried.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the cheese and butter.

The step that matters

Fry without turning. Leaving the toasts untouched lets the bottom form a crisp, golden crust from the butter. Turning too early can tear the bread and disturb the topping.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese, ham, pepper. 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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