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French Toast

A sweetened bread dish made by dipping slices in beaten eggs and milk, then frying and sprinkling with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

French Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and mix with the milk.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Moisten the bread slices in the egg mixture.

  2. Fry the bread in butter until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve hot.

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. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on the bread as it cooks, giving structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the egg coating, keeping the bread tender inside.
Bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and becomes golden and crisp on the outside when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat into the bread and adds fat that promotes browning and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the bread in butter until golden brown. The bread must be soaked but not waterlogged, and the pan must be hot enough for butter to brown the surface. Too cool a pan lets the custard soak through and steam the bread instead of browning it.

“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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