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French Toast

A dish of bread dipped in beaten egg and milk, fried in fat, optionally topped with stewed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl with a little salt and the milk.

  2. Dip the bread slices in the egg mixture, coating both sides.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated bread in boiling fat until light brown.

  2. Remove the bread, drain it, and serve.

  3. Optionally, top with stewed rhubarb or other seasonal fruit.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + rhubarbtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Milk + rhubarbtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together294 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 sets to form a light coating when fried.
Milk
Thins the egg so it soaks into the bread and keeps the centre moist.
Bread
Soaks up the egg mixture and fries to a crisp, golden outside.

The step that matters

Frying the coated bread in boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the egg coating quickly. If it is too cool, the bread soaks up grease and turns soggy before the coating sets.

Swap the rhubarb

The recipe marks rhubarb as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread. 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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