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To Make Milk Toast

Milk toast is bread dipped in a butter, flour, water, milk mixture and toasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

To Make Milk Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a toast pan and sprinkle in the flour, mixing well with a spoon.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring continuously until combined.

  3. Stir in the milk or cream and heat until it just begins to boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the bread until light brown, then dip each piece in the hot mixture one at a time.

  2. Layer the dipped bread in a dish and spoon more of the mixture over each piece.

  3. Once all the bread is in the dish, pour the remaining mixture over the top.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich flavour and smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it combines with the fat and hot liquid.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Bread
Absorbs the hot sauce, becoming soft and moist while holding its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour from clumping. Lumps form when flour meets liquid all at once, and they are hard to smooth out later.

“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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