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Bread Steak

Bread steak is a fried bread and onion dish served with potatoes and greens.

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 ↓

Bread Steak

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dip the bread in milk, then in the beaten egg.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  3. Fry the bread and onion until golden brown.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, and serve with potatoes and greens.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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 base of the dish and holds the milk and egg coating.
Egg
Binds the coating to the bread and helps it brown in the pan.
Milk
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and a softer texture.
Onion
Softens and turns sweet and aromatic as it fries in the butter.
Butter
Provides fat for frying and helps the coating turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Fry the bread and onion until golden brown. The egg and milk coating browns quickly through Maillard reactions, so it can burn before the centre heats through. Medium heat gives the bread and onion time to cook evenly while browning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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