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Breakfast

French Toast

A simple bread dish soaked in beaten egg and milk, then fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. Add the sweet milk and a little salt, and mix well.

  3. Dip each slice of bread into the mixture, allowing it to absorb some milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a buttered griddle over medium heat.

  2. Brown the soaked bread slices on the griddle.

  3. Spread butter on the cooked slices.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the milk and bread together and helps the slices set during cooking.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread, adding moisture and softness to the finished slices.
Bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and becomes the body of the dish once browned.
Butter
Greases the griddle and adds richness and browning to the surface of the slices.

The step that matters

Dip the bread briefly and let it absorb some milk. Bread that is soaked too long turns soggy and falls apart on the griddle, while bread that is barely dipped stays dry in the middle and browns unevenly. A light, even soak lets the custard set through the slice as it cooks.

“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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