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German Toast

A bread-based dish soaked in egg and milk custard, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into slices.

  2. Mix the eggs with the cold milk to make a custard.

Soak and fry

  1. Soak the bread slices in the custard for 1 hour.

  2. Fry the soaked slices on a buttered griddle until light brown.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread
Forms the body of the dish and soaks up the custard to become tender inside.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the toast structure and a custardy interior.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats and soaks into the bread evenly.
Butter
Browns on the griddle, adding richness and golden colour to the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked slices on a buttered griddle until light brown. Frying over moderate heat lets the outside brown through the Maillard reaction while the custard inside sets. Too hot a pan browns the surface before the centre cooks.

“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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