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Savory Fried Bread

Savory fried bread made from stale loaf slices soaked in vegetable stock, dipped in egg and milk, fried in butter, served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Savory Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut stale loaf bread into slices about ½ inch thick and shape them like chops.

  2. Soak the slices in a rich, well-seasoned vegetable stock until nearly saturated, but do not let them become too soft.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the soaked slices in beaten eggs mixed with milk.

  2. Fry in butter until golden brown.

  3. Serve with tomato sauce or around a dish of stewed tomatoes.

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 + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale loaf bread
Forms the body of the dish; its drier crumb soaks up liquid without falling apart.
Vegetable stock
Seasons the bread and moistens it through soaking, giving savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the coating and set when fried, helping form a golden crust.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats the bread evenly and adds tenderness.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Soaking the slices. Bread soaked until nearly saturated but not too soft keeps its shape. Over-soaking makes the slices collapse and fry unevenly, while under-soaking leaves dry centers.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter. 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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