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Drink

Toast Water, or Crust Coffee

A beverage made by steeping toasted stale bread crusts in boiling water, then sweetened and served cold or warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Toast Water, or Crust Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bread coffee

  1. Toast the stale bread crusts until dark brown, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Place the toasted crusts in a large pitcher and cover with boiling water.

  3. Cover the pitcher and let it steep until cool.

  4. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses with a piece of ice in each.

  2. For a warm version, add cream and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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

Stale bread crusts
Toasted until dark brown, they provide the roasty, coffee-like flavour and colour of the drink.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour from the toasted crusts as it steeps, turning them into a brewed liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to taste after straining, balancing the roasted bitterness.

The step that matters

Toast the crusts until dark brown. Toasting gives the crusts their roasted, coffee-like flavour through browning reactions. Pale crusts give a weak, bready drink, while burnt crusts make it acrid and bitter, so the colour should be dark brown without black spots.

“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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