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Drink

Toast Water

Toast Water is a beverage made by soaking toasted bread in boiling water, then flavored with lemon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Toast Water

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Toast Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Toast the bread slices thoroughly, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Add the boiling water to the toasted bread and let it stand until cold.

  3. Pour off the water and flavor it with lemon and sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Toasting browns the slices, and their starch and flavour infuse into the water as it steeps.
Boiling water
Hot water extracts flavour and toasty notes from the bread as it steeps.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the toast water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Toasting the bread thoroughly without burning it. Toasting browns the bread through, developing the flavour that carries into the water. Burnt spots add bitter, acrid notes that the water will pick up and the drink cannot mask.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar. 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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