Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cream Toast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the cream
Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.
Add the butter and stir until melted.
In a bowl, mix the flour with the heavy cream until smooth.
Gradually add some boiling milk to the flour mixture, stirring to prevent lumps.
Pour the mixture back into the saucepan with the boiling milk and cook for a few moments.
Season with coarse sea salt to taste.
Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg.
Serve
Strain the mixture over lightly buttered toast.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the cream thickens into a smooth sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the mixture as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving body.
- Heavy cream
- Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
- Egg
- Enriches and thickens the sauce slightly when stirred in off the heat.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Stir in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at higher temperatures and can scramble if the mixture is still boiling, leaving the sauce grainy. Removing it from heat first lets the egg thicken gently and smoothly.
“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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