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Dessert

Queen Toast

A sweet toast made by dipping bread in milk and egg, frying in butter and lard, and layering with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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

  1. Cut the bread into moderately thick slices.

  2. Beat the egg with 1 teaspoon of sugar, then mix the milk and egg together.

  3. Mix 2 tablespoons of sugar with ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Dip the slices of bread in the milk and egg mixture.

  3. Fry the bread in hot butter on both sides until light brown.

  4. Stack the slices on a hot dish, sprinkling sugar and cinnamon between them.

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 + buttertop 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. Bread + milktop 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

Bread
Forms the body of the dish, soaking up the egg mixture and frying to a crisp outside.
Egg
Binds the milk to the bread and sets during frying, giving structure to the slices.
Milk
Moistens the bread so it fries through and stays tender inside.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, promoting browning and a rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the slices and caramelises slightly on the surface when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the bread in hot butter on both sides until light brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the soaked bread absorbs grease and turns soggy instead of browning. Medium-high heat sets the egg coating quickly and browns the surface, so the slices stay crisp outside and cooked inside.

Swap the cinnamon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, sugar, milk, butter. 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.

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