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Lemon Toast

A toast served with a lemony sauce made from egg yolks, milk, sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lemon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Beat the egg yolks well and mix with the sweet milk.

  2. Dip the bread slices into the milk and egg mixture.

Fry the toast

  1. Fry the dipped bread slices in a skillet with melted butter until golden brown.

Make the lemon sauce and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Mix in the lemon juice and then add the boiling water.

  3. Serve the lemon sauce over the toast.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the milk mixture and help the bread brown and set in the pan.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and softness inside the toast.
Bakers' bread
Absorbs the egg and milk custard, then crisps on the outside when fried.
Melted butter
Fat in the skillet that conducts heat and browns the bread surface.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth to add airy lightness to the sauce.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread slices until golden brown. Soaked bread can burn on the outside while the custard inside stays wet if the heat is too high. Medium heat lets the egg set and the surface brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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