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Fancy Croutons

A recipe for croutons made from stale bread, egg white, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 and fry

  1. Cut stale bread into thin ½-inch slices and stamp out shapes like diamonds or rings.

  2. Fry the shapes until golden brown.

Dip and arrange

  1. Dip one side of each crouton in the egg white mixed with flour.

  2. Arrange the croutons around the edge of the dish, pressing them to adhere.

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
Dry, sturdy structure that fries to a crisp, golden base.
White of 1 egg
Binds the coating so it adheres to the crouton and the dish edge.
Flour
Thickens the egg white into a coating that holds and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Dip one side only, in the egg white and flour mixture. The egg white and flour form a thin glue. A thick or heavy coating stays tacky and slides off, so the croutons won't stay pressed to the dish edge.

“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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