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Fried Toast

A quick dish of bread soaked in egg and milk, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fried Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread slices in a mixture of beaten egg and milk or water.

  2. Heat the fat in a griddle over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the soaked bread slices until golden brown on both sides.

  2. Serve warm as a side or foundation for other dishes.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 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 soaks up the egg mixture and fries to a crisp golden crust.
Egg
Coats the bread and sets when fried, binding the slices and adding richness.
Milk or water
Thins the beaten egg so it soaks evenly into the bread, adding moisture.
Fat
Conducts heat in the pan and promotes browning on the surface of the bread.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread until golden brown on both sides. Soaked bread is soft and wet, so the pan must be hot enough to set the egg and brown the surface quickly. Too low a heat lets the bread steam and turn soggy, while too high a heat can scorch the outside before the centre sets.

“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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