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Milk Toast

A dish of toasted bread soaked in milk and butter, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Milk Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Remove the crust from stale light bread and slice it half an inch thick.

  2. Toast the slices quickly.

  3. Dip each slice in boiling water as it comes from the toaster.

  4. Butter the slices thinly and sprinkle with a little salt.

  5. Place the slices in a deep, covered dish.

Make the milk sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat enough milk to cover the toast.

  2. Thicken the milk slightly with flour, ensuring no lumps.

  3. Salt the milk, melt in a bit of butter, and pour over the toast.

Serve

  1. Cover closely and let it stand for five minutes 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Stale light bread
Forms the base that soaks up the milk and gives the dish its body.
Boiling water
Briefly softens the toasted surface so the bread takes in moisture.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the toast and forms the creamy sauce.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk so it clings to the toast instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavor to the bread and the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour without lumps. Flour clumps when added to hot liquid all at once, and dry clumps do not hydrate. Whisking the flour into the milk gradually keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly.

“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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