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Cream Toast

Cream Toast is bread dipped in a warm milk, butter, flour, and cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a basin over boiling water, combine the milk and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub the butter and flour together until smooth.

  3. Once the milk is hot, stir in the butter and flour mixture, stirring occasionally until slightly thickened.

  4. Add the cream and let it heat through.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread quickly to prevent drying; scrape off any burned edges.

  2. Dip each piece of toast in the cream mixture and arrange them in two piles in a deep dish.

  3. Pour the remaining cream over the toast, cover, and serve.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a light sauce when cooked with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce and moistening the toast.
Bread
Soaks up the cream mixture, becoming soft while holding its shape.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid and stirred, so adding it to milk that is not yet hot can leave lumps. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly.

“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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