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Breakfast

French Toast

A simple dish of stale bread soaked in beaten eggs and milk, fried in butter and served with cinnamon, sugar, or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 custard

  1. Beat the eggs slightly in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and milk to the eggs and mix well.

  3. Dip the slices of stale bread into the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat and add butter to coat.

  2. Brown one side of the bread on the griddle.

  3. Place a small piece of butter on top of each slice, then turn and brown the other side.

  4. Serve hot with cinnamon and sugar or a sauce.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and set into a tender, custard-like interior when cooked.
Milk
Moistens the bread and carries the egg into a soft, custardy texture.
Stale bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and holds its shape, so the slices brown well without falling apart.
Butter
Coats the griddle and browns the surface of the bread, adding richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Dip the bread briefly and evenly. Stale bread absorbs liquid quickly. Over-soaking makes the slices soggy and fragile, so they tear on the griddle and brown unevenly. A quick, even dip gives a moist interior with a sturdy crust.

Swap the cinnamon

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

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

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