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 ↓
Egg Toast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk.
Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.
Slice the stale bread thinly.
Fry
Dip each slice of bread into the batter.
Fry the battered bread in butter until golden brown.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and set into a coating around the bread when fried.
- Milk
- Thins the egg mixture so it soaks into the bread and adds moisture.
- Flour
- Thickens the egg and milk into a stiff batter that clings to the bread.
- Stale bread
- Absorbs the batter and becomes a soft, custardy interior when fried.
- Butter
- Fries the battered bread, adding fat and promoting browning and flavour.
The step that matters
Fry the battered bread in butter until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat lets the egg-and-flour coating set and brown before the soaked interior overcooks or burns. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the surface, which also adds flavour.
“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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