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German Toast

German Toast is a dish of stale bread soaked in milk, coated in egg and cracker crumbs, fried in lard, served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut stale bread into ½ inch slices.

  2. Soak each slice in milk until softened.

  3. Dip soaked bread in beaten eggs.

  4. Roll the bread in cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve with cream sauce.

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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + eggtop 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

Stale bread
Forms the body of the dish; its dry, open crumb soaks up milk and egg well.
Milk
Softens the bread so it absorbs the egg coating evenly.
Eggs
Bind the coating to the bread and set during frying to form a crisp shell.
Cracker crumbs
Add a crunchy outer layer that browns quickly in the hot fat.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the bread absorbs grease and turns soggy before the outside browns.

“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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