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Drink

Graham or Brown Bread Brewis

A warm drink made by simmering milk with butter, salt, and bread crumbs, served with whipped butter and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Graham or Brown Bread Brewis

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Add the butter and salt when the milk is near boiling.

  3. Stir in enough Graham bread crumbs to thicken to a porridge consistency.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped butter and brown sugar, or with cream and sugar.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs thicken into a porridge.
Graham bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and swell, thickening it into a porridge texture.
Fresh sweet butter
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow flavour to the porridge.

The step that matters

Stirring in the bread crumbs. Crumbs added to very hot milk can clump, so they should be stirred in steadily while the milk is not boiling hard. Starch in the crumbs absorbs liquid and thickens as it heats, so the porridge needs constant stirring to reach an even, smooth consistency.

“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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