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 ↓
Cream Toast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the toast
Toast the desired number of slices of bread.
Make the cream sauce
In a saucepan, combine milk, cream, and butter.
Heat the mixture almost to a boiling point, then add salt to taste.
Serve
Pour the hot mixture over the toast in a deep dish.
Cover the dish until ready to serve.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread
- Forms the base that soaks up the warm cream mixture.
- Milk
- Provides a liquid base that gives the sauce a thin, soft body.
- Cream
- Adds fat that makes the sauce richer and smoother.
- Butter
- Adds fat and flavour to the warm cream mixture.
The step that matters
Heating the mixture almost to a boil. Heating the milk and cream gently just below boiling warms them through without scorching the milk sugars on the pan base. Boiling hard can cause the dairy to scorch or boil over, so stop before the mixture bubbles vigorously.
“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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