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Cream Toast

A toasted bread served with a thickened milk and butter cream.

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 ↓

Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Toast the bread until golden brown.

  2. Scald the milk in a saucepan until hot.

  3. Dissolve the cornstarch or flour in cold water and add to the hot milk, stirring gently until thickened.

  4. Simmer until there is no raw taste of the flour, then stir in the butter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer a few slices of toast in a deep dish, pour some hot cream over them, then add more slices and repeat.

  2. Lift the lower slices to allow the creamy mixture to run between them, reserving some to pour over the top.

  3. 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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 cream and holds its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce and supplies moisture and richness.
Cornstarch or flour
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth cream as its starches swell with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the finished cream.

The step that matters

Simmer until the starch is cooked. Thickening with flour or cornstarch needs enough heat and simmering time to swell the starch fully. Undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste, so the cream should be cooked until that taste is gone.

“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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