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Queen’s Toast

A sweet toast made by soaking bread in milk, sugar, salt, and egg, then frying and optionally sprinkling with cinnamon sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Queen’s Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

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

  2. Dip slices of bread into the mixture, allowing them to soak for a minute if they are dry.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a buttered griddle over medium heat.

  2. Fry the soaked bread slices until light brown on each side.

  3. Serve warm, sprinkled with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar if desired.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the milk mixture and helps the bread set and hold together when fried.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread to moisten it and forms the custard coating.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown evenly in the butter.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and becomes tender inside while the outside crisps and browns.
Butter
Fries the coated bread, adding fat for browning and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Soak the bread properly. Dry bread needs a minute in the custard so it absorbs enough liquid; otherwise the centre stays dry while the outside over-browns.

Swap the cinnamon

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

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

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