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Toast Soup

A milk-based soup with toasted bread, egg yolks, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Toast Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cut the toast into small pieces.

  3. Place the toast pieces in a tureen.

  4. Dust the toast with sugar and a small pinch of salt.

  5. Beat the egg yolks in a little boiling water.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the beaten yolks over the toast.

  2. Pour the hot milk into the tureen.

  3. Stir well.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and softens the toast.
Toast
Soaks up the hot liquid, giving the soup body and a toasted flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add richness and body as they cook gently in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory salt and toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Stir well after adding the hot milk. Egg yolks thicken and can turn grainy or curdle when they get too hot in one spot. Stirring spreads the heat evenly through the milk and yolks, keeping the soup smooth.

“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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