Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Stale Bread Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Rake the stale bread into small pieces.
Mix the bread with milk and salt.
Beat the eggs separately, the whites and yolks.
Combine the egg mixture with the bread mixture.
Cook
Bake on a griddle like buckwheat cakes until golden.
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.
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Forms the body of the cakes and soaks up milk to create a soft, tender crumb.
- Milk
- Moistens the bread so it softens and binds into a workable batter.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving structure and richness to the cakes.
The step that matters
Bake on a griddle until golden. Cooking over steady, moderate heat lets the centers set through before the outsides over-brown. Too hot a griddle browns the surface while the inside stays wet.
“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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