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Cream Toast

A creamy sauce made from milk, butter, flour, cream, and egg, poured over lightly buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Add the butter and stir until melted.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour smoothly with the cream.

  4. Gradually add some boiling milk to the flour mixture, stirring to prevent lumps.

  5. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan with the boiling milk.

  6. Cook for a few moments.

  7. Season with salt.

  8. Remove from heat.

  9. Stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Strain the mixture over lightly buttered 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it its body and creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, enriching the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at around 160°F and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding the egg lets it thicken the sauce smoothly without curdling.

“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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