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Milk Toast

Milk Toast is toasted bread topped with a hot milk and cream mixture thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Milk Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the graham bread or gems in two.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the milk and cream together.

  2. Thicken the mixture with corn starch.

  3. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the toast and serve.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + corntop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Graham bread or gems
Forms the base that soaks up the warm sauce.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and its milky flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, turning it into a coating sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated in the liquid to swell and gelatinise; if it is added to a cold mixture or not brought to a simmer, it stays lumpy and the sauce stays thin.

“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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