Skip to main content
Dessert

Torrijas

Torrijas are sweet fried bread strips soaked in milk and rum, dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Torrijas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. Beat the egg into the milk and sweeten to taste.

  2. Cut stale bread into strips, about the thickness of your finger, twice as broad, and 5 inches long.

  3. Dip the bread first into the sweetened milk, then into the rum, and drain excess liquid.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the bread until golden‑brown.

  3. Remove with a skimmer and place on brown paper in the oven to dry.

  4. Once dry, arrange on a hot dish in pairs at right angles.

  5. Sift powdered sugar and cinnamon over the top and serve with custard sauce flavored with rum.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rum + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Stale bread (in the method)
Its dry, porous crumb soaks up the milk and rum and crisps when fried.
Milk
Soaks into the bread, keeping the inside soft and moist while the outside fries.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the soaked bread set and hold together when fried.
Rum or liqueur
Adds aroma and flavor and moistens the bread during soaking.
Lard
Fries the bread, browning the outside and giving it a crisp, rich crust.

The step that matters

Frying the soaked bread. The bread must be drained well before frying, or excess liquid spatters and steams instead of browning. Lard must be hot enough to brown the crust quickly, so the soaked interior stays moist without becoming greasy.

“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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes