Skip to main content
Main

Milk Toast

Milk Toast is a simple dish of toasted bread topped with a thickened milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Milk Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into even slices, about ⅓ inch thick.

  2. Toast the bread.

  3. Spread a little butter on each slice.

Make the milk sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour and salt until thickened.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the toasted bread in a deep dish.

  2. Pour the thickened milk over the bread.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the base that soaks up the sauce and gives a soft, toasty contrast.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the toast and a little fat to the bread.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the hot milk. Flour added without constant whisking can clump, leaving lumps in the sauce. Whisking disperses the starch so it thickens evenly as it heats.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes