Why it works: Bread and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,638 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Toast Water
Ingredients
Directions
Make the toast water
Brown slices of bread in the oven.
Pour enough boiling water over the bread to cover it.
Let the bread steep until cold, keeping it covered.
Finish and chill
Strain off the water and sweeten to taste.
Chill by placing the dish in a bowl of chopped ice.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,638 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
- Slices of bread
- Browning gives the water a toasty, roasted flavour and color as the bread steeps.
- Boiling water
- Hot water extracts flavour and colour from the toasted bread during steeping.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to balance the toasty, slightly bitter flavour of the browned bread.
The step that matters
Steeping the bread while covered. Keeping the bowl covered while the bread steeps traps aroma and stops the water from evaporating, so the flavour extracts fully as it cools.
“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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