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Milk Toast

Milk Toast is a dish made by baking stale bread, coating it with a thickened milk mixture, and folding in whipped egg white.

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 ↓

Milk Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Brown the slice of stale bread delicately and cut it into strips.

  2. Place the bread strips in a bowl.

Make the milk sauce

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan and add the butter.

  2. Blend the flour with a little water to make a paste.

  3. Strain the flour mixture into the scalding milk and stir until thickened.

  4. Cook gently while whipping the egg white to stiff peaks with a pinch of salt.

  5. Remove the milk from heat and quickly fold in the whipped egg white.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast in the bowl and serve immediately.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Stale bread
Forms the base that soaks up the sauce, with browning adding a toasted flavour.
Rich milk
Provides the liquid and body of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the scalded milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it lightens the sauce and adds airy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Fold gently and quickly once the milk is off the heat. Overmixing or heat deflates the whipped foam, so the sauce loses its lightness.

“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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