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Breakfast

French Toast

A sweetened bread dish fried in lard and served with powdered sugar or maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk and the beaten egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a skillet until smoking hot.

  2. Dip each slice of bread into the egg and milk mixture.

  3. Fry the bread in the hot lard until light brown.

  4. Remove from skillet and sprinkle with powdered sugar or serve with maple syrup.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + maple syruptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Egg
Binds the milk to the bread and helps set the coating when fried.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread to moisten it and forms the custard coating.
Bread
Absorbs the egg and milk mixture, then crisps and browns in the hot fat.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the bread's surface.

The step that matters

Frying in smoking-hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the bread absorbs more fat and turns greasy before the coating sets. Sufficiently hot fat sears the outside quickly, forming a crisp, browned surface while the custard inside sets.

“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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