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German Toast

A fried bread dish made with eggs, milk, lard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and a pinch of salt to the eggs and mix well.

Soak and fry

  1. Cut the loaf of bread into slices.

  2. Soak the bread slices in the milk and egg mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Heat the lard and butter in a pan over medium heat.

  4. Fry the soaked bread slices until light brown on both sides, turning once.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the soaking liquid and help the bread set and brown when fried.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that soaks into the bread, keeping the slices moist inside.
Baker's bread
Forms the body of the dish, absorbing the egg and milk mixture as it soaks.
Lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat and gives the slices a golden, crisp surface.
Butter
Adds fat and aroma to the frying surface, contributing flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread slices until light brown on both sides, turning once.. Soaked bread is wet and fragile, so it needs moderate heat and a stable fat. Too high a heat scorches the surface before the custard inside sets, while too low a heat leaves the slices soggy instead of browned.

“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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