Skip to main content
Dessert

Fancy Croutons

A simple snack of toasted bread slices coated with egg white and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fancy Croutons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the croutons

  1. Cut stale bread into thin ½‑inch slices.

  2. Stamp out shapes such as diamonds or rings.

  3. Fry the shapes until golden brown.

Make the border and serve

  1. To make a border, dip one side of each crouton in a mixture of egg white and flour.

  2. Arrange the croutons around the edge of the dish.

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 + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its dried-out crumb crisps and browns when fried, holding its shape well.
White of 1 egg
Its proteins set when heated, helping the coating bind to the crouton surface.
Flour
Thickens the egg white into a paste that clings to the crouton and helps it stick.

The step that matters

Dipping one side in the egg white and flour mixture. The coating should be thin and even. A thick or lumpy mixture clumps and may not adhere evenly, while too much liquid can make the croutons soggy and slow to set.

“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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes