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Cream Toast

Cream Toast is a toasted bread dish topped with a milk and butter cream.

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 ↓

Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread until golden brown.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a dish filled halfway with boiling water.

  3. Dip each slice of toasted bread in the melted butter for a second and place in a deep heated dish.

Make the cream

  1. Heat the milk until scalding hot but not boiling.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour and let it simmer until cooked.

  3. Add the remaining butter and the beaten egg whites to the milk, bringing it to a boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast, lifting the slices to allow the cream to run between them.

  2. Cover closely and set in the oven for a few moments 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. 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 bread
Dry, sturdy slices absorb the butter and cream without falling apart.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream sauce that coats and soaks into the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps coat the toast so it stays tender.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff and folded into the hot milk, they add lightness and body to the cream.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream body so it clings to the toast.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be cooked in the simmering milk long enough to swell and lose its raw taste. Stirring it in smoothly prevents lumps, and the starch then thickens the liquid so it coats the toast rather than running off.

“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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