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French Toast with Pears

A sweet and savory toast made by dipping bread in egg mixture, frying, and topping with heated canned pears.

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 ↓

French Toast with Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add milk, pepper, and salt to the eggs and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip slices of bread into the egg mixture.

  2. Fry the dipped bread in hot butter until golden brown.

  3. Heat enough canned pears to serve one pear for each slice of bread.

  4. Place the pears on the toast and drizzle with a little juice before serving.

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. Milk + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when cooked, binding the egg mixture to the bread and giving the toast its structure.
Milk
Adds moisture to the egg coating, keeping the toast tender inside.
Bread
Soaks up the egg mixture and fries to form the base of the dish.
Butter
Fat for frying that helps the bread brown and adds richness.
Canned pears
Add sweetness and fruity moisture on top of the crisp toast.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread in hot butter until golden brown. Butter browns through milk solids and sugars in the Maillard reaction, so the bread needs enough heat to brown without burning. Too cool and it soaks up butter and turns soggy; too hot and the outside darkens before the egg inside sets.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Pearthe original

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