Why it works: Bread and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,445 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Toast Water
Ingredients
Directions
Toast the slice of stale bread slowly until golden brown, avoiding burning.
Pour the boiling water over the toasted bread.
Cover and let it stand until cold.
If desired, add lemon rind for flavor.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,445 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Toasted bread browns and gives the water a mild, toasty aroma and flavor.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavor and color from the toasted bread as it steeps.
The step that matters
Toast the bread slowly until golden brown. Toasting slowly browns the bread evenly without burning it. Burnt bread adds bitter, acrid flavors that carry into the water.
“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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