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Drink

Toast Water, or Crust Coffee

A coffee substitute made by steeping toasted stale bread crusts in boiling water, sweetened and served cold or with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Toast Water, or Crust Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast stale bread crusts until dark brown, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Place the toasted crusts in a large pitcher.

  3. Pour enough boiling water over the crusts to cover them.

Steep and serve

  1. Cover the pitcher and let it steep until cold.

  2. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

  3. Serve with a piece of ice in each glass, or warm with cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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

Stale bread crusts
Toasted crusts provide the dark, roasted flavour that gives the drink its coffee-like character.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour and colour from the toasted crusts during steeping.

The step that matters

Toasting the crusts until dark brown. Browning drives the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which create the roasted, coffee-like flavour. Pale crusts give a weak, bready drink, while burnt crusts add bitter, acrid notes, so timing matters.

“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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