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Drink

Toast Water

A beverage made by steeping stale bread in boiling water, then cooling, straining, and optionally adding wine and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Toast Water

Why it works: Bread and wine work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 956 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Toast Water

Ingredients

Directions

Toast and steep

  1. Toast the bread until very dark brown, but do not burn it.

  2. Place the toasted bread in a pitcher.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the bread.

  4. Cover the pitcher and let it stand on ice until cold.

Strain and flavor

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Add wine and sugar if desired.

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.

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.

  1. Bread + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Bread
Toasting browns the bread, providing the dark color and toasted flavor that the water takes up.
Boiling water
Extracts the toasted flavor and color from the bread into the liquid.
Wine
Adds acidity and a fruity aroma when used.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitter edge of the toasted bread.

The step that matters

Toasting the bread very dark. Browning builds the toasted flavor through Maillard reactions and caramelization. Stopping just short of burning gives rich flavor, while burnt bread turns the water bitter and acrid.

“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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