Name: Egg Toast
Ingredients: 4 slices of bread; ½ cup hot milk; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 3 hard boiled eggs, whites sliced finely; grated yolks of 3 hard boiled eggs

Why it works: Bread and milk 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 ↓

Egg Toast

Ingredients

4 slices of bread
½ cup hot milk
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
3 hard boiled eggs, whites sliced finely
grated yolks of 3 hard boiled eggs

Directions

Prepare

Toast the bread until golden brown.
Dip each slice into hot milk mixed with salt for 30 seconds.

Assemble and serve

Prepare a cream dressing and mix in the finely sliced egg whites.
Spread the dressing over the toast.
Sprinkle grated yolks on top of each slice.
Serve immediately while hot.

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.

Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Bread: Forms the base that holds the dressing and absorbs the warm milk.
Hot milk: Softens the bread so it becomes moist and tender.
Hard boiled eggs: Egg whites add body to the dressing while the grated yolks add rich, crumbly texture on top.

“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.