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Cream Toast

Cream Toast is a dish of toasted bread 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread until golden brown.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a dish half full of 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, then bring 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 a 350°F (175°C) 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

Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the cream and holds its shape.
Milk
Provides the liquid that becomes the cream when thickened.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and coats the toast so it absorbs less cream.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they add lightness and help the cream set as it heats.
Flour
Thickens the milk so it clings to the toast instead of running off.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the milk. Flour must simmer long enough to cook fully and thicken the milk smoothly; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin, lumpy cream.

“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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