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French Toast

A dish of bread soaked in beaten eggs and milk, fried, and topped with currant jelly and parsley.

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

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into pieces about ½ inch thick and then cut the slices in half.

  2. Melt a piece of butter in a frying pan.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix in the milk and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip each piece of bread into the egg mixture, then place it in the frying pan.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

  3. Top each piece with a little currant jelly and serve on a plate garnished with parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the egg mixture and becomes soft inside and crisp outside.
Eggs
Bind with the milk to coat the bread and set into a custard-like layer when fried.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it soaks into the bread and keeps the inside moist.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the surface brown evenly and giving rich flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity tang that contrasts with the savory-leaning toast.

The step that matters

Dip the bread briefly. Bread that stays too long in the egg mixture becomes soggy and may fall apart in the pan. A quick, even dip lets the custard coat the surface and cook into a set layer.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

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