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Snow Flake Toast

A toast topped with a thickened milk and cream sauce mixed with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Flake Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk, cream, and salt in a pot until boiling.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk to thicken it.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour a cup of the hot sauce over the beaten egg whites, stirring constantly.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the remaining sauce and keep hot without boiling.

  4. Moisten the slices of zwieback or toast with milk or hot water before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 sauce and adds creamy, milky flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce through its fat content.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the sauce a light, airy, foamy texture.

The step that matters

Combining the egg whites with the hot sauce. Pouring the sauce in while stirring constantly tempers the egg whites gently, so they blend smoothly instead of deflating. Keeping the mixture hot without boiling avoids curdling and collapse.

“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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