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German Toast

A bread dish made by dipping slices in beaten egg and milk, frying in butter, and serving buttered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg and salt together until light.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Dip the slices of bread into the egg mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the bread in a skillet greased with butter until browned on both sides.

  2. Remove from the skillet and butter the slices before serving.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the milk to the bread and sets to give the slices structure when fried.
Milk
Thins the egg so it soaks into the bread and adds moisture to the slices.
Bread
Soaks up the egg mixture and fries to a golden, crisp-edged surface.
Butter
Greases the skillet for browning and adds richness to the finished slices.

The step that matters

Frying until browned on both sides. Medium heat with enough butter lets the egg coating set and brown through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat leaves the slices pale and soggy, while too much burns the outside before the center cooks.

“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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