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French Toast

A dish of stale bread dipped in egg and milk, fried in butter, 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

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg slightly, then add the salt and milk.

  2. Heat a frying pan and add a piece of butter.

  3. Dip the bread quickly into the egg mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Place the dipped bread in the frying pan and brown on one side.

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

  3. Serve immediately 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. 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

Stale bread
Stale bread is dry and absorbs the egg mixture without falling apart.
Egg
Egg binds the milk to the bread and sets when fried, giving structure.
Milk
Milk adds moisture and softens the bread as it soaks up the custard.
Butter
Butter in the pan adds fat that browns the bread and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Dip the bread quickly into the egg mixture. Bread that soaks too long turns soggy and falls apart in the pan. A quick dip lets the surface absorb enough custard to brown evenly while the centre stays intact.

Swap the cinnamon

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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