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Bread

French Toast

A sweetened bread dish cooked on a buttered griddle after dipping in egg and milk.

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

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add sweet milk and salt, and mix well.

  3. Slice the light bread.

  4. Dip each slice into the mixture, allowing it to absorb some milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook on a hot buttered griddle until browned.

  2. Spread with butter and 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 to the bread and helps the slices set firmly when cooked.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread to add moisture and softness to the finished slices.
Light bread
Forms the base that soaks up the custard and turns golden when cooked.
Butter
Fat for the griddle that helps the slices brown and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Dip each slice into the mixture, allowing it to absorb some milk.. If the bread soaks too briefly, the centre stays dry; if it soaks too long, it turns soggy and may fall apart on the griddle. A quick, even dip gives moist slices that hold their shape.

“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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