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Drink

Toast Water

A beverage made by soaking toasted bread in boiling water, optionally sweetened with sugar or condensed milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Toast Water

Why it works: Sugar and condensed milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Toast Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toast

  1. Toast the bread until very brown and dry throughout.

  2. Break the toasted bread into fine pieces.

Steep and serve

  1. Add the bread to 1 pint of boiling water and set aside for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a strainer or gauze.

  3. Serve the water plain or add sugar or condensed milk as desired, hot or cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + condensed milktop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Toasting it deeply browns the bread, giving the water its roasted, toasty flavour and colour.
Boiling water
Carries the flavour and colour out of the toasted bread, becoming the drink itself.

The step that matters

Toast the bread until very brown and dry throughout. Browning through Maillard reactions creates the toasty flavour that defines the drink. Pale or soft toast gives a weak, bready taste, so the bread should be toasted deeply and evenly.

“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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