Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cream Toast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the cream sauce
Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.
Add the butter and stir until melted.
Mix the flour smoothly into the cream, then add some boiling milk to this mixture.
Gradually heat the mixture, stirring to prevent lumps.
Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and let it cook for a few moments.
Add salt to taste.
Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg.
Serve
Strain the mixture over lightly buttered toast.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other ingredients.
- Flour
- Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
- Rich cream
- Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
- Beaten egg
- Sets gently with the heat, further thickening and enriching the sauce.
- Butter
- Adds fat and flavour to the sauce.
The step that matters
Mix the flour into the cream before adding it to the milk. Flour clumps when dropped into hot liquid because its starch grains swell on the outside first. Blending it smoothly into cold cream first lets it disperse evenly, and gradual heating with stirring keeps the sauce lump-free.
“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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