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Lemon Toast

A toast dipped in egg and milk, fried, topped with a lemon‑sugar sauce made from beaten egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lemon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the egg bath

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix with the milk.

  2. Dip slices of bread into the mixture.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the bread in butter until golden brown.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a froth. Add sugar and lemon juice to the egg whites. Stir in boiling water and serve as a sauce over the toast.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the milk bath and help the bread take on a custardy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the bread soaked in the egg mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they give the lemon sauce a light, airy texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tart lemon juice in the sauce.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the bread in butter until golden brown. Butter browns through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, giving colour and flavour. Frying over too high a heat can scorch the outside before the soaked egg center is cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar. 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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