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French Toast or French Bread

A simple bread dish made by dipping slices in an egg, milk, flour, and salt mixture and frying until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Toast or French Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, flour, and salt.

  2. Dip slices of bread into the mixture, ensuring they are well coated.

Fry

  1. Heat a pan over medium heat and add butter and lard.

  2. Fry the coated bread slices until golden brown on both sides.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set the custard coating and help the bread hold together while frying.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the coating, so the bread stays tender inside.
Flour
Thickens the batter slightly so it clings to the bread instead of running off.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat and helps the surface brown evenly.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the coating set and brown gradually. Too hot and the outside darkens before the egg mixture cooks through, leaving the centre custardy.

“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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