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Lemon Toast

A toast topped with a lemon‑cornstarch‑egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wheat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 585 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon sauce

  1. Blend cornstarch with the juice of the lemon until smooth.

  2. Add salt and the well-beaten egg, and mix well.

  3. Bring water to a boil and slowly add the mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Boil for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast while hot and set aside to cool slightly.

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. Lemon + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together585 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + wheattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg
Thickens the sauce and adds richness as it sets with the cornstarch.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a glossy sauce when heated.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and bright flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the mixture to the boiling water slowly, stirring constantly. Adding the mixture slowly while stirring prevents the egg from scrambling and lumps of starch from forming. Constant stirring keeps the cornstarch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Blueberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, wheat. 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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