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English Monkey

A cheese bread made with stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, cheese, egg, spices, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Monkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in milk for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the finely cut cheese.

  2. Stir slowly until the cheese melts.

  3. Add the soaked crumbs, beaten egg, salt, cayenne pepper, and mustard.

  4. Cook until the mixture is smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast.

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 + buttertop 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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the mixture body as they soften.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and loosens the mixture.
Cheese
Melts into the base to give the mixture its rich, savoury flavour and creamy texture.
Beaten egg
Sets gently with heat to bind the mixture and thicken it.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture is smooth. Cooking over gentle heat while stirring lets the egg thicken without scrambling. If the heat is too high, the egg can curdle and the texture turns grainy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, cheese, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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

“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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