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Drink

Toast and Water

A simple drink made by soaking a toasted slice of stale bread in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Toast and Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the crust from the stale bread.

  2. Toast the bread on both sides until brown, ensuring it hardens without burning.

  3. Place the toasted bread in a jug.

  4. Pour boiling water over the bread.

  5. Cover the jug with a saucer and set it in a cool place.

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Toasting dries and browns the bread, giving the water a toasted flavour and aroma.
Boiling water
Hot water extracts flavour and aroma compounds from the toasted bread as it steeps.

The step that matters

Toast until brown, not burnt. Toasting browns the bread's surface and builds toasty flavour. Burnt bread turns bitter and carries that bitterness into the water, so stop once the bread is evenly brown and hardened.

“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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