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Milk or Cream Toast

A toasted bread dish soaked in thickened milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Milk or Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bread

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and warm the bread slices for a few minutes.

  2. Toast the bread until golden brown, being careful not to scorch it.

Make the milk sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk slowly and season with salt.

  2. Add a generous lump of butter and bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Thicken the milk with a mixture of flour and water rubbed smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Quickly dip the edges of each toast slice in hot water and place them in the thickened milk.

  2. Transfer the slices to a warmed deep dish, one at a time.

  3. Pour the remaining thickened milk over the toast and serve immediately.

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. Bread + milktop 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. Milk + flourtop 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

Bread
Provides the absorbent base that soaks up the thickened milk while keeping its shape.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that is thickened into a sauce coating the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother, more rounded flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour and water. The flour must be rubbed smooth into the water first, otherwise it forms lumps that won't dissolve. Starch thickens the milk only once it is heated, so the sauce should be stirred while it comes up to a simmer to set evenly.

“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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