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French Toast

A simple bread dish fried in egg and milk, served with cinnamon, sugar or syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg, milk, and salt.

  2. Dip the stale bread into the egg mixture until coated.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add butter.

  2. Fry the bread until golden brown on one side.

  3. Add a small piece of butter on top of the bread, then flip and brown the other side.

  4. Serve hot with cinnamon and sugar or syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the milk to the bread and sets when fried, giving structure to the slice.
Milk
Adds moisture to the egg mixture so the bread soaks it up and stays tender.
Stale bread
Dry bread absorbs the egg mixture well without turning soggy, so it holds its shape.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning and adds a rich, toasty flavor to the crust.

The step that matters

Dip the stale bread until coated. Stale bread soaks up the egg mixture without falling apart. Fresh bread turns soggy and may not brown evenly, so the dip should be quick and thorough.

Swap the cinnamon

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

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

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