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Meat and Egg Toast

A toasted bread topped with a creamy mixture of eggs, milk, butter, minced meat, and tomato sauce.

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 ↓

Meat and Egg Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut rounds of bread and fry them in half the butter.

  2. Mince the meat finely and set aside.

Make the topping

  1. In a saucepan, combine the remaining butter, eggs, milk, salt, and pepper; stir over medium heat.

  2. When the eggs begin to thicken, add the minced meat and tomato sauce.

  3. Stir over the heat until the mixture is as thick as cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast and serve very hot.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken as they heat, giving the mixture a creamy, set body.
Butter
Fat that fries the bread and enriches the egg mixture with flavour and richness.
Milk
Loosens the egg mixture so it stays smooth and spreads over the toast.
Meat
Provides the savoury, protein-rich filling that the egg mixture carries.
Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the topping and provides a crisp, fried surface.

The step that matters

Stir over the heat until the mixture is as thick as cream.. Eggs set when heated, and if the heat is too high or stirring stops they can curdle or turn grainy. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter, sauce, pepper, meat. 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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