Why it works: Bread and wine work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 956 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓
Toast Water
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Toast the bread on both sides until rich brown.
Cut the toasted bread into pieces.
Infuse and serve
Pour the boiling water over the bread pieces.
Add wine or other stimulant if desired for an invalid.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Bread + winetop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together956 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Toasting browns the bread, and the browned surface gives the water a toasty, roasted aroma and flavour.
- Boiling water
- Hot water draws flavour and colour out of the toasted bread pieces, turning them into a light, drinkable infusion.
The step that matters
Toast the bread until rich brown. Browning drives the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which create the toasty flavour the water takes on. Pale bread gives a weak, bland drink.
“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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