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German Toast

A simple fried bread dish made by coating stale bread in an egg‑milk batter and frying until golden.

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 ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and salt to make a thin batter.

  2. Cut stale bread into ½ inch slices.

  3. Dip each slice quickly in the batter, coating both sides.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated bread in a well‑buttered, hot frying pan until golden brown.

  2. Serve on a hot platter with grape butter or peach marmalade.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + grapetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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 batter and set into a custardy coating around the bread as it fries.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it soaks into the bread and adds moisture to the interior.
Stale bread
Dry crumb absorbs the batter well, so the slices hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Fat in the pan promotes even browning and adds rich flavour to the crust.

The step that matters

Fry in a well-buttered, hot pan. A hot, buttered pan sears the coated surface quickly, setting the egg outside and browning it before the bread soaks through and turns soggy or sticks.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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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