Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Toast

A lemon-flavored toast dessert made with eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and lemon juice, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Lemon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toast

  1. Beat the yolks of six eggs well and add three cupfuls of sweet milk; dip slices of baker's bread, not too stale, into the milk and eggs, then lay the slices into a spider with sufficient hot melted butter to fry a delicate brown.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. Beat the whites of the six eggs to a froth, adding a large cupful of white sugar; add the juice of two lemons, heating well and adding two cupfuls of boiling water.

Serve

  1. Serve over the toast as a sauce and you will find it a very delicious dish.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

453Calories
15 gProtein
30 gFat
30 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Vanilla1 tsp extract (4ml)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the milk dip and whites, beaten to a froth, lighten the sauce.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread to moisten it and form the custard-like coating.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity that brightens the sweet sauce.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Butter
Fries the soaked bread, giving browning and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the lemon sauce. Adding the boiling water and juice to beaten egg whites and sugar must be done gently while heating well. Egg proteins set with heat, so careful heating thickens the sauce smoothly rather than leaving it runny or curdled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, cream, vanilla, egg):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, cream, vanilla, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes