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Saratoga Toast

A toasted bread dish made by dipping stale bread in beaten eggs and milk, then frying in lard and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Saratoga Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the beaten eggs, milk or water, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Slice the stale bread and dip each slice into the egg mixture.

Cook

  1. Fry the dipped bread on a well-greased griddle until brown.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and help the slices set and hold their shape when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the soaking mixture so the bread softens without falling apart.
Stale bread
Dry structure that soaks up the egg mixture and crisps to a golden surface when fried.
Lard and butter
Fat for frying that conducts heat evenly and promotes browning on the bread surface.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread on a well-greased griddle until brown. Enough fat and steady heat are needed so the egg coating sets and browns before the bread absorbs too much liquid and turns soggy or sticks to the griddle.

“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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