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French Toast

A simple bread dish made by dipping stale bread in an egg and milk mixture, then frying until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt, and pepper.

  2. If desired, add flour to create a thick batter.

  3. Dip the slices of stale bread into the batter, ensuring they are well coated.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add a little butter.

  2. Fry the coated bread slices in the skillet until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot, either with pot roasts or as a standalone breakfast dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Set during frying to bind the bread and form a tender custard coating.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it soaks into the bread and adds moisture.
Stale bread
Absorbs the batter and provides the structure that gets crisp and browned in the pan.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, promoting browning and a rich flavor on the surface.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the bread more heavily.

The step that matters

Fry over medium heat until golden on both sides. Too high a heat browns the outside before the egg in the center sets, leaving the middle wet. Medium heat lets the custard cook through while the surface turns golden.

“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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