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German Toast

A savory toast topped with a mixture of fricassee, eggs, and breadcrumbs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely chop the fricassee or hash with parsley, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the beaten egg and stew in gravy until reduced and thickened.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then pile it on square pieces of toast.

Bake and serve

  1. Top with slices of hard-boiled egg.

  2. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with bread-crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice over before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The beaten egg binds the filling and thickens it as it stews in gravy.
Fricassee or hash
Provides the main cooked meat base that the filling is built around.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, thickened by stewing with the egg.
Fine bread-crumbs
Sprinkled on top, they help form a crisp, golden browned crust in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before piling it on the toast. Stewing with beaten egg sets it as it thickens; piling it on hot toast before it cools can make the toast soggy and the filling loose and runny.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, egg, bread, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, egg, bread, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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