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Dessert

Rum Toast

A sweet toast made by dipping cake slices in beaten eggs, frying, and topping with rum syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rum Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with salt and lemon juice until frothy.

  2. Dip the cake slices in the egg mixture.

Fry and soak

  1. Fry the dipped cake slices until they are delicately browned.

  2. Boil sugar and water together to make a syrup.

  3. Add rum or sherry to the syrup and pour it over the fried cake.

  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. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Egg yolks bind to the cake and set when fried, forming a golden, custardy coating.
Cake slices
Absorb the egg mixture and syrup, providing the base structure of the dish.
Sugar
Dissolves in water to make the syrup that sweetens and moistens the fried cake.
Lemons
Lemon juice adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the egg mixture.
Rum or sherry
Adds aroma and depth of flavour to the syrup poured over the cake.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped cake slices. Frying over the right heat until delicately browned sets the egg coating on the outside while the inside stays soft. Too hot and the coating scorches before the egg cooks through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rum. 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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