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Toast and Water

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Toast and Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut a thick slice of stale bread.

  2. Toast the bread until completely browned, but not burnt.

  3. Place the toasted bread in a jug.

  4. Pour boiling water over the bread until covered.

  5. Cover the jug and let it cool completely.

  6. For added flavor, infuse with lemon peel, orange peel, currant jelly, or apples.

  7. If in a hurry, place the bread in a mug, cover with boiling water, let cool, then add cold spring water and strain.

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. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, currant, apple):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, currant, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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