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Prench Toast

A bread slice dipped in beaten egg and milk, fried in lard, served with butter, sugar, or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Prench Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and sugar, and mix well.

  3. Dip the slices of bread into the mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the bread in hot lard until light brown.

  2. Serve with butter, or sprinkle with sugar and milk.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the batter and helps the bread set and hold together when fried.
Milk
Moistens the bread and adds liquid that softens it for even soaking.
Bread
Soaks up the custard-like batter, then browns in hot fat to form the crisp outside.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when the bread is fried.

The step that matters

Fry the bread in hot lard until light brown. If the fat is not hot enough, soaked bread absorbs grease and turns soggy instead of crisping. Frying over steady heat sets the outside while the inside cooks through, and it browns the sugar in the batter.

“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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