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French Toast

A sweet or savory bread dish made by dipping slices in beaten eggs and milk, then frying.

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 egg mixture

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add milk and salt to the eggs and mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the slices of bread into the egg mixture.

  2. Heat a frying pan and add a little butter to prevent sticking.

  3. Fry the bread slices until they are golden brown on both sides.

  4. Serve immediately with syrup if desired.

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

Eggs
Set when cooked and bind the custard that coats the bread.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it soaks into the bread and adds moisture.
Bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and browns in the pan to form the crust.
Butter
Fat that keeps the bread from sticking and promotes golden browning.

The step that matters

Frying the bread slices. The pan must be hot enough and lightly greased so the egg coating sets and browns quickly. If the pan is too cool, the bread soaks up butter and turns soggy instead of golden.

“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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