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Queen Toast

A toasted bread dish soaked in milk and egg, fried with butter and lard, served with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Queen Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg and stir in the milk.

  2. Cut the bread into triangular pieces and soak in the milk mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and lard until hot.

  2. Fry the soaked bread in the hot fat until brown on both sides.

  3. Serve with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled between the slices.

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. Butter + breadtop 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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Milk
Soaks into the bread, moistening it and forming the custard-like coating.
Egg
Binds the milk mixture so it coats the bread and helps it set when fried.
Bread
Absorbs the milk mixture and crisps on the outside when fried in fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and helps the bread brown in the hot pan.
Lard
Provides a high-heat frying fat that browns the bread evenly.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread in the hot fat until brown on both sides. The fat must be hot before the bread goes in, so the surface sears and browns quickly. Cooking in cool fat lets the soaked bread absorb grease and turn soggy rather than crisp.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

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