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Water Toast

Water Toast is toasted bread soaked in boiling water and salted, served plain or with butter or egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Water Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toast

  1. Toast the zwieback or stale white bread over an open fire until golden.

  2. Place the toasted bread on a plate.

Soak and serve

  1. Pour quickly boiling water over the toast, adding salt.

  2. Drain the water immediately.

  3. Serve plain, or spread with sweet butter or the yolk of an egg.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 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

Zwieback or stale white bread
Provides the base that softens and holds its shape when soaked in hot water.
Sea salt
Seasons the toast, lifting its mild, plain flavour.
Sweet butter
Adds fat and richness to the plain toast when spread on it.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, giving a creamier finish when spread on the toast.

The step that matters

Drain the water immediately. Leaving the toast in hot water lets it become soggy and fall apart, so the water should be poured off right away.

“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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