Skip to main content
Main

Egg Toast

A toast topped with a sweetened egg and macaron mixture, served warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Egg Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine thick cream, white sugar, pounded macaroons, chopped almonds, and grated lemon. Bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the yolks of 8 eggs and the whites of 3 eggs until well combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture over slices of fried bread that have been buttered.

  2. Serve warm for tea.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites thicken the mixture as it sets, giving it a soft, custard-like body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the topping a smooth, creamy texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the mixture a glossy, tender texture.
Macaroons
Add almond flavour and body, thickening the mixture slightly as they soften.
Fried bread
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that holds the warm topping.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before stirring in the eggs. Adding egg to a very hot mixture can scramble it. Cooling the cream slightly first lets the eggs blend smoothly and thicken gently instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, almond, egg, bread, butter. 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.

More egg toast recipes

Anchovy 5Broccoli 3Cheese 3Creamed 3Tomato 3 See all 54 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipes