Skip to main content
Drink

Toast Water

A beverage made by soaking toasted bread in boiling water, then sweetened and optionally flavored with citrus peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Toast Water

Why it works: Bread and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Toast Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toast water

  1. Toast the bread until very brown but not burnt.

  2. Pour enough boiling water over the toasted bread to cover it.

  3. Let it cool, then strain off the water.

Flavour and serve

  1. Sweeten the strained water to taste.

  2. Add a little orange or lemon peel while the water is hot, if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Bread
Toasting browns the crust, and the toasted bread gives the water its nutty, roasted flavour and colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the mild, toasty taste of the water.

The step that matters

Toast the bread until very brown but not burnt. Browning produces the roasted flavour and colour that the water takes on. Pale toast gives a weak, bland drink, while burnt bread adds bitter, acrid notes that carry into the water.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes