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Dessert

Lemon Toast

A sweet and tart toast topped with a lemon sauce made from egg yolks, milk, sugar, and lemon juice.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs well and add 3 cups of sweet milk.

  2. Cut baker's bread into slices and dip them into the milk and egg mixture.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the dipped slices in sufficient melted butter until they are a delicate brown.

  2. Beat the whites of the 6 eggs to a froth and add 1 cup of white sugar.

  3. Add the juice of 2 lemons and 2 cups of boiling water, heating well.

Serve

  1. 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
Thicken and enrich the dipping mixture, giving the toast a rich body.
Baker's bread
Soaks up the egg and milk mixture and forms the base of the dish.
Melted butter
Fries the soaked slices, adding fat for browning and flavor.
Egg whites
Beaten to a froth, they add lightness to the sauce.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the lemon juice's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped slices. Bread soaked in egg and milk browns quickly, so the butter should be hot enough for a delicate golden brown but not so hot that the outside scorches before the egg in the center sets.

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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