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Egg Toast

Egg Toast is a sweetened egg batter soaked bread, fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Egg Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs slightly in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, salt, nutmeg, and milk; strain the mixture.

  3. Soak pieces of stale bread in the mixture until soft.

Fry and brown

  1. Butter a frying pan and place the soaked bread slices in it.

  2. Cook slowly, browning one side.

  3. Turn and brown the other side.

  4. Add more butter as needed to prevent burning.

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. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when cooked, giving the bread a firm, custardy structure.
Milk
Adds moisture that soaks into the bread and keeps the slices tender.
Stale baker's bread
Dry, open crumb soaks up the custard well without falling apart.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the surface brown in the pan.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds richness and promotes even browning.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, browning one side. Over high heat the outside browns before the custard inside sets, leaving the center wet. Medium-low heat lets the egg cook through while the surface turns golden, and extra butter helps prevent scorching.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, bread, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, bread, butter. 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.

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