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Breakfast

French Toast

A simple breakfast dish of bread dipped in egg and milk, fried and served with cinnamon and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 custard

  1. Beat the egg slightly, then add salt and milk.

  2. Dip the bread in the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle and add ½ teaspoon of butter.

  2. Brown the bread on one side, then place ¼ teaspoon of butter on top of each slice.

  3. Turn the bread and brown on the other side.

  4. Serve hot with a mixture of cinnamon and powdered sugar.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 binds the milk to the bread and sets into a tender, custardy crumb when cooked.
Stale bread
Dry, porous bread soaks up the egg mixture well without falling apart.
Milk
Milk thins the egg and adds moisture, keeping the slices soft inside.
Butter
Butter adds fat that helps the surface brown and gives a rich flavor.
Powdered sugar
Powdered sugar adds sweetness and dissolves quickly over the hot toast.

The step that matters

Browning the bread on the first side. Cooking over steady medium heat lets the egg set and the sugars brown evenly. Too high a heat scorches the outside before the custard in the center sets.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter, sugar. 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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