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Breakfast

French Toast with Preserve

A toasted bread dish coated in egg mixture and fried, served with preserve.

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 ↓

French Toast with Preserve

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bread thick and remove the crusts.

  2. Beat the eggs well, then add milk and salt, and mix until combined.

  3. Heat a smooth frying pan and melt enough butter to cover the bottom.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip the bread slices in the egg mixture until well coated.

  2. Place the coated slices in the hot butter and brown nicely on both sides.

  3. Ensure the egg is delicately crinkled and golden.

  4. Serve on a hot platter with your choice of preserve.

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 custard coating and set to a delicate crinkled, golden crust when fried.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats the bread evenly and keeps the inside moist.
Day-old bread
Stale bread soaks up the egg mixture without falling apart, giving a sturdier slice.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the bread surface and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Brown the slices in hot butter. If the pan is not hot enough, the bread soaks up butter and egg and turns greasy instead of browning. Medium-high heat sets the egg quickly for a golden crust.

“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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