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French Toast

A sweetened bread dish fried in butter after dipping in an egg, milk, cream, sugar, and cinnamon mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add milk, cream, sugar, and cinnamon.

  3. Dip the bread slices into the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the bread in the pan until golden brown.

  2. Serve immediately, optionally sprinkle with sugar or serve with brandy sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and set around the bread as it cooks.
Bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and fries to a crisp golden surface.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it soaks evenly into the bread.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the surface brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until golden brown. Cook over moderate heat so the sugar in the custard browns without burning before the centre of the bread sets. Too hot a pan scorches the outside while the inside stays wet.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, egg, milk, cream, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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