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Dutch Toast

Dutch toast is a bread dish soaked in a milk and egg custard, then fried and served with powdered sugar or cinnamon.

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 ↓

Dutch Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, eggs, and nutmeg; sweeten to taste.

  2. Dip the thin slices of baker's bread into the custard mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil or butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Fry the dipped bread slices until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot, dusted with powdered sugar or cinnamon.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the milk into a custard that coats the bread and sets when fried.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture to the bread.
Baker's bread
Soaks up the custard so the slices cook through while the outside crisps.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread slices until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the custard set and the sugars in the bread brown evenly. Too hot and the outside burns before the custard inside cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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