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Dessert

French Toast

A sweetened toast made by soaking bread in eggs and milk, frying, then coating with powdered sugar and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and fry

  1. Soak the bread slices in a mixture of eggs and milk.

  2. Fry the soaked bread in a buttered frying pan until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the powdered sugar and eggs until frothy.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the boiling milk and add vanilla extract.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Bind the soaked bread and set when fried, giving a custard-like interior.
Milk
Adds moisture that soaks into the bread and helps it brown.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds flavour and promotes golden browning.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves into the beaten eggs.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling milk just before serving. Hot milk poured into beaten eggs can start to cook them, so adding it at the last moment keeps the sauce smooth and runny rather than thickened or grainy.

“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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