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Feench Toast

Bread slices soaked in beaten egg and sweet milk, fried on buttered griddle, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Feench Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the egg thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. Add the sweet milk and a little salt, and mix well.

  3. Slice the light bread and dip each slice into the mixture, allowing it to absorb some milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a buttered griddle and brown the soaked bread slices on it.

  2. Spread with butter and serve hot.

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
Binds the milk to the bread and helps the slices set when cooked.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread to moisten it and forms the custard coating.
Light bread
Absorbs the egg and milk mixture, becoming soft inside and browning on the outside.
Butter
Greases the griddle and adds richness and browning to the surface.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. If slices soak too briefly they stay dry in the center, while overlong soaking makes them soggy and prone to tearing on the griddle. Letting the bread absorb some milk gives an even, tender interior.

“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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