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FreNcH ToASt

A dish of bread dipped in milk and egg, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

FreNcH ToASt

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, beaten egg, and salt.

  2. Trim the crusts from the bread and cut it into uniform slices.

  3. Dip each slice into the milk mixture.

Fry

  1. Fry the slices in boiling lard until they are light brown.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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
Binds the milk to the bread and helps the coating set when fried.
Milk
Soaks into the bread to keep the slices moist and tender inside.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the body of the dish once fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the slices.

The step that matters

Dip each slice into the milk mixture. Dipping briefly lets the bread soak up the custard without becoming soggy and falling apart. Thick slices need only a quick soak so the centre stays moist while the outside sets in the hot fat.

“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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