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German Toast

A toasted bread dish topped with a seasoned meat mixture, hard‑boiled egg, and breadcrumbs, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the leftover fricassee or ragout finely and mix with parsley, shallot or chive, and beaten eggs.

  2. Put the mixture with its gravy into a saucepan and let it reduce and thicken over heat.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Toast slices of bread.

  2. Spread the mixture thickly on the toasted bread.

  3. Chop the hard-boiled egg and place pieces of it on top of the bread.

  4. Brush the entire dish with beaten egg.

  5. Sprinkle the dish with bread crumbs.

  6. Bake the dish in the oven.

  7. Squeeze a little lemon juice on top before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leftover fricassee or ragout
Provides the savoury, meaty base that forms the bulk of the topping.
Eggs
Bind the chopped filling so it thickens and holds together when cooled and baked.
Bread
Serves as the crisp toasted base that holds the spread filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a dry, golden crust on top during baking through browning.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread and aids browning of the surface.

The step that matters

Reducing the filling until thick. The mixture must be reduced until it is thick enough to spread without running. Eggs in the filling can scramble or curdle if overheated, so it should be cooked gently and then cooled before spreading on the bread.

“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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