Name: Sweet Breads
Ingredients: sweet breads; coarse sea salt; nutmeg; eggs; flour; butter; vinegar; ketchup

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 ↓

Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Soak sweet breads in salt water for 1 hour.
Boil sweet breads in the same water until cooked.
Remove skins and slice sweet breads into ½ inch thick pieces when cool.
Season each slice with coarse sea salt and nutmeg.
Dip slices in beaten eggs and then in flour.
Fry in very hot butter until golden brown.
Keep fried slices warm.
Add a little flour to the frying pan, and when browned, add nutmeg, vinegar, and ketchup.
Let the sauce boil, then pour it over the sweet breads.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,435 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, flour, butter, vinegar, ketchup):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Nutmegthe original
Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, flour, butter, vinegar, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.