Why it works: Bread and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,445 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Toast and Water
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread
Cut the crust off the stale bread, making the slices about twice as thick as usual.
Toast the bread until completely browned, but not burnt.
Make the tea
Pour boiling water into a jug, enough to make your desired drink.
Add the toasted bread to the jug and let it stand until cold.
For added flavor, infuse with lemon, orange peel, currant jelly, or apples.
If in a hurry, place the bread in a mug, cover with boiling water, let it cool, then add cold spring water and strain.
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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Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,445 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
- Stale bread
- Toasted bread gives the tea its brown color and toasty, roasted flavor.
The step that matters
Toast the bread until completely browned, but not burnt. Toasting drives browning reactions that create the tea's color and flavor. Burnt bread adds bitter, acrid notes that carry into the drink.
“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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