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Lemon Toast

A toast made by soaking stale bread in a beaten egg and milk mixture, fried in butter, then topped with lemon juice and sugar.

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 ↓

Lemon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs well.

  2. Stir the beaten yolks into the milk.

  3. Soak the bread slices in the milk and egg mixture for 1 minute.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the soaked bread in boiling butter until golden brown.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the toast and sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  3. Serve immediately while hot.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the soak and help the bread brown and set as it fries.
Milk
Moistens the bread so it softens and absorbs the custard-like mixture.
Stale bread
Absorbs the milk and egg mixture and crisps to a golden surface when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the bread surface and adds rich flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich fried toast.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a light crust on the hot toast.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread in boiling butter until golden brown. The butter must be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. If it is too cool, the soaked bread absorbs fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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.

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