Name: Toast Wine
Ingredients: 1 slice of well browned toast; ½ pint boiling water; 1 teaspoon sugar; 2 tablespoons wine

Why it works: Sugar and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,581 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Toast Wine

Ingredients

1 slice of well browned toast
½ pint boiling water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons wine

Directions

Place the slice of toast in a cup.
Pour the boiling water over the toast.
Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
Mix in the wine and serve immediately.

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.

Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9,581 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Well browned toast: Adds toasted, roasted flavour and aroma from the browning of its surface.
Boiling water: Forms the liquid base and dissolves the sugar while softening the toast.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the wine's acidity.
Wine: Adds acidity and fruity flavour to the drink.

“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.