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German Toast

A quick bread dish made by coating slices in beaten eggs and milk, then frying in butter.

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 ↓

German Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the milk, salt, and cinnamon if using.

  2. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip each slice of bread into the egg mixture, coating both sides.

  2. Place the coated bread in the skillet and cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve warm, optionally with syrup or powdered sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a tender coating around the bread as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture to the egg mixture so the bread soaks it up and stays soft inside.
Bread
Soaks up the egg mixture and crisps and browns in the butter.
Butter
Fat in the skillet that browns the coated bread and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the egg coating set and brown without burning. Too high a heat darkens the outside before the centre of the bread is set.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, butter):

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

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