Name: French Toast
Ingredients: 1 pint milk; slices of bread; maple syrup or Karo Corn Syrup

Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

1 pint milk
slices of bread
maple syrup or Karo Corn Syrup

Directions

Dip slices of bread in the milk.
Fry the dipped bread on both sides until nicely browned.
Serve with maple syrup or Karo Corn Syrup.

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.

Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Milk + maple syruptop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together798 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Bread + maple syruptop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together31 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Soaks into the bread, moistening it so the inside turns soft and custardy.
Bread: Absorbs the milk and browns in the pan, giving the toast its structure and crisp exterior.

“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.