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Harrison Cream Toast

A toast topped with a warm butter, flour, milk, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Harrison Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir the flour into a small amount of milk until smooth.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the melted butter and the rest of the milk.

  4. Heat the mixture gently, avoiding boiling, and add the beaten eggs.

  5. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Dip the toast into the mixture and pour the remaining sauce over it.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it its bulk and smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Eggs
Add body and richness to the sauce as they set gently with the heat.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently, avoiding boiling. Eggs thicken the sauce by setting with gentle heat. If the mixture boils, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth 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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