Skip to main content
Main

Lemon Toast

Toast served with a lemon sauce made from egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice.

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

Lemon Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

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

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

  3. Fry the dipped bread slices in hot melted butter until golden brown.

Make the lemon sauce and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth and mix in the white sugar.

  2. Add the lemon juice and boiling water to the egg white mixture.

  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 soak up custard for a rich texture.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture and liquid that soaks into the bread.
Baker's bread
Forms the base that absorbs the egg mixture and fries to a golden crust.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the sauce and give it a airy, foamy body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and stabilizes the whipped egg whites in the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped bread in hot butter. Bread that is too cold or fried too slowly absorbs excess fat and turns greasy, while overly hot butter can burn before the inside is soaked through. Medium-high heat gives an even golden-brown crust.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes