Skip to main content
Breakfast

French Toast

Bread dipped in beaten eggs and milk, then fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat 3 eggs.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs with ½ cup milk.

  3. Prepare 5 slices of bread and a bowl of water with a pinch of salt.

  4. Grease a frying pan with butter.

  5. Beat 5 eggs.

Cook

  1. Dip each slice of bread into the salted water.

  2. Dip each slice of bread into the beaten eggs.

  3. Dip the slices of bread into the egg mixture.

  4. Place the bread in the frying pan.

  5. Pour the remaining egg over the bread.

  6. Cook over medium heat.

  7. Turn the bread when it is light brown.

  8. Fry the dipped slices in butter until slightly browned.

  9. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Set into a custard that binds the coating and gives the toast a tender interior.
Milk
Adds moisture to the egg mixture, keeping the coating soft and custardy.
Bread
Soaks up the egg mixture and provides the structure that holds the dish together.
Butter
Adds fat that browns the surface and gives a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Turn the bread when it is light brown. Soaked bread is fragile, so flipping it too early can tear it. Waiting until the surface is light brown lets the coating set and form a crust that holds together.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, butter, pepper):

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes