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 ↓
Fried Bread with Cottage Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Spread stale bread slices thickly with cottage cheese and blend in pimientos, nut meats, or marmalade/jelly if desired.
In a bowl, whisk together the egg and milk.
Dip the prepared bread slices in the egg and milk mixture.
Fry
Fry the bread quickly in butter or other fat until golden brown.
For a variation, omit the egg and milk and fry the bread lightly in a small amount of bacon fat.
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 + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together376 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Cottage cheese + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together239 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread slices
- Forms the base that soaks up the egg mixture and crisps when fried.
- Cottage cheese
- Provides a soft, creamy filling spread over the bread.
- Egg
- Binds the milk to the bread and helps the coating set and brown.
- Milk
- Moistens the bread so the coating stays tender inside while frying.
The step that matters
Fry quickly over steady heat. Frying the bread quickly until golden brown keeps the egg coating set and browned without letting the soaked bread turn greasy or soggy inside.
“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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