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German Toast

A toasted bread dish made by soaking stale bread in egg and milk, then frying with butter.

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 ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the egg lightly in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and milk to the egg and mix well.

  3. Soak the stale bread slices in the mixture until soft.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle and add butter to coat the surface.

  2. Brown one side of the soaked bread on the griddle.

  3. Place a small piece of butter on top of each slice, then turn and brown the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with additional butter, cinnamon and sugar, or a sauce.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg
Binds the milk to the bread and helps the slices set and hold together when browned.
Milk
Moistens the bread and carries the egg, giving a soft, custard-like interior.
Stale bread
Dry bread soaks up the liquid well, so the slices absorb the custard without falling apart.
Butter
Fat that conducts heat to the surface, promoting golden browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. Soaking until soft lets the custard penetrate the crumb. Too brief leaves dry centres; too long makes slices fragile and likely to tear on the griddle.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar, sauce):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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