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Dessert

Queen Toast

A sweet toast made by dipping bread in milk and egg, then frying and sprinkling 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: 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 ↓

Queen Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into moderately thick slices.

  2. Beat the egg with 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  3. Mix the milk and beaten egg together.

Fry

  1. Heat the butter and lard in a frying pan.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of sugar with ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon.

  3. Dip the bread slices in the milk and egg mixture.

  4. Fry the bread in the hot butter on both sides until light brown.

Serve

  1. Place the slices in a pile on a hot dish, sprinkling sugar and cinnamon 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. 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 + 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. Bread + milktop 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

Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the egg mixture and fries to a crisp, golden exterior.
Egg
Binds the milk to the bread, helping it set and brown during frying.
Milk
Adds moisture to the soaked bread, keeping the inside soft while the outside browns.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds flavour and helps the bread brown evenly.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and caramelises slightly on the hot bread for added browning.

The step that matters

Fry the bread in the hot butter on both sides until light brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coated bread quickly. If the pan is too cool, the soaked bread absorbs fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the cinnamon

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

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

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

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