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Breakfast

French Toast

A simple breakfast dish of bread dipped in beaten egg and milk, then fried in butter.

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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a small amount of butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

Cook

  1. Dip each slice of bread into the egg and milk mixture, coating both sides.

  2. Fry the coated bread slices in the skillet until golden brown.

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
Sets when cooked, binding the coating so it holds firmly to the bread.
Milk
Thins the egg, adding moisture so the bread soaks up a soft, custard-like coating.
Bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and becomes tender inside while its surface crisps in the pan.
Butter
Adds fat to the skillet that helps the coated bread brown and gives a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry over medium heat until golden brown. Medium heat lets the egg coating cook through to the center while the outside browns. Higher heat can scorch the surface before the egg sets, leaving the inside raw.

“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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