Skip to main content
Breakfast

French Toast

A breakfast dish of bread dipped in beaten eggs and milk, then fried and served with optional cinnamon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs slightly.

  2. Add salt and milk to the eggs.

  3. Dip the bread slices into the egg mixture.

Cook

  1. Heat the griddle.

  2. Add butter to coat the griddle.

  3. Brown the bread on one side.

  4. Place a small piece of butter on top of each slice.

  5. Turn the bread.

  6. Brown the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with cinnamon and sugar or a sauce.

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 + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and set into a custard that holds the slices.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and adds moisture so the slices stay tender inside.
Stale bread
Dry crumb soaks up the egg mixture without falling apart.
Butter
Coats the griddle and browns the surface of the bread, adding richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Dip the bread slices into the egg mixture. Stale bread absorbs the custard quickly, so a brief dip keeps slices from becoming soggy and falling apart on the griddle.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes