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Croutons for Soup

Croutons are toasted bread squares added to hot soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Croutons for Soup

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 ↓

Croutons for Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Fry the croutons

  1. Heat 1 inch of boiling fat in a frying pan.

  2. Drop enough bread squares into the fat to cover the surface.

  3. Fry until browned, then remove with a skimmer and drain.

Serve

  1. Add the croutons to hot soup and serve.

Oven alternative

  1. For an alternative, butter thin slices of bread, cut into ¾ inch squares, and place in a buttered baking pan.

  2. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its dry, firm crumb crisps when fried or baked instead of going soggy in soup.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown in the oven alternative.

The step that matters

Fry until browned, then remove with a skimmer and drain. Bread keeps browning in its own residual heat after it leaves the fat, so removing it at the first golden colour prevents bitter, over-dark croutons. Draining lets excess oil run off so the croutons stay crisp.

“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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