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Dessert

Lemon Toast

A sweet toast made with egg yolks, milk, butter, sugar, lemon juice, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Lemon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Beat the egg yolks well, then mix the beaten yolks with the sweet milk.

  2. Dip the bread slices into the milk and egg mixture.

  3. Fry the dipped bread slices in hot melted butter until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth, then mix the frothy egg whites with the sugar.

  2. Add the lemon juice to the mixture.

  3. Heat the mixture.

  4. Stir in the boiling water.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over the toast.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the milk mixture and help the bread take on a custard-like coating.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they add lightness and airy texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts through the sweetness.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread and carries the egg into the coating.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread in hot butter. The bread must be hot and well coated so the surface browns and sets quickly; too cool a pan lets the soaked bread absorb fat and turn soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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