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Dessert

To Make Fried Toast

A slice of bread soaked in cream, sugar, and nutmeg, fried in butter, and served with wine sauce.

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 ↓

To Make Fried Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the slice of bread in rich cream mixed with sugar and nutmeg until fully absorbed.

Fry

  1. Melt a good amount of butter in a frying pan and fry the soaked bread until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Place the fried toast on a dish and pour wine sauce over it 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the cream and crisps to a golden surface when fried.
Rich cream
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and richness to the centre.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the pan.
Butter
Fries the bread, adding fat for a crisp, golden crust and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the soaked bread until golden brown. Heat must be high enough to brown the surface quickly, but not so high that the outside burns before the soaked centre is cooked through. Sugar in the cream browns faster than starch, so the pan needs close attention.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, sugar, butter, wine, sauce):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, sugar, butter, wine, 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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