Skip to main content
Breakfast

Queen Toast

A bread dish soaked in milk and egg, fried in butter and lard, served with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Queen Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the egg and stir it into the milk.

  2. Soak the bread pieces in the milk mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter and lard in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the soaked bread in the hot fat until brown on both sides.

  3. Serve with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled between the slices.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg
Binds the milk to the bread and helps the soaked slices set when fried.
Milk
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and a soft, custardy interior.
Bread
Absorbs the egg and milk mixture, then browns and crisps in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps the bread brown in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior caramelise when browned.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread in the hot fat until brown on both sides. If the fat is not hot enough, the soaked bread absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of browning. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs sufficient heat on the surface of the bread.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter, bread):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes