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Lemon Toast

A toast served with a lemon sauce made from egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water.

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 ↓

Lemon Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs and mix with 3 cups of sweet milk.

  2. Cut baker's bread into slices and dip them into the egg and milk mixture.

  3. Fry the dipped bread slices in sufficient melted butter until golden brown.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. Beat the whites of the 6 eggs until frothy and mix in 1 cup of white sugar.

  2. Add the juice of 2 lemons and 2 cups of boiling water to the egg white mixture.

  3. Serve the lemon sauce over the toast.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the milk dip and add richness and colour to the toast.
Baker's bread
Soaks up the egg and milk mixture and fries to a golden crust.
Egg whites
Beaten until frothy to lighten the sauce.
White sugar
Sweetens the lemon sauce and balances its tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped bread in butter. Bread soaked in egg and milk can burn on the outside before the centre sets if the heat is too high. Medium heat lets the egg custard cook through while the surface browns evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, butter, 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.

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