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German Toast

A toasted bread dish made by soaking stale bread in a sweetened egg mixture and frying it in lard and butter.

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

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut stale bread into half-inch slices and remove the crust.

  2. In a bowl, mix slightly beaten eggs with milk, salt, and sugar.

  3. Soak the bread slices in the egg mixture for a few moments.

Cook

  1. Carefully lift the soaked bread with a spatula and place it on a hot, well-greased griddle with equal parts lard and butter.

  2. Brown one side, then turn and brown the other side, adding more lard and butter if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve with maple syrup for breakfast or luncheon, or with apricot sauce for dessert.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the soaked bread and set into a custard that holds the slices together while frying.
Milk
Adds moisture to the egg mixture so the bread stays soft inside.
Bread
Soaks up the egg custard, then browns on the griddle to form a crisp outside.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown evenly in the pan.
Lard and butter
Grease the griddle and add fat that browns the slices and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Brown one side, then turn and brown the other side. Flipping too early, before the first side has set and browned, can tear the soaked bread. Enough fat on the griddle helps the surface brown rather than steam or stick.

“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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