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Dessert

Torrijas

A fried bread dish soaked in milk, rum, and sweetened, served with custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Torrijas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. Beat the egg into the milk and sweeten to taste.

  2. Cut stale bread into strips ½ inch thick, 1 inch wide, and 5 inches long, removing the crusts.

Soak and fry

  1. Dip the bread first into the sweetened milk, then into the rum, and drain.

  2. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  3. Fry the bread until golden-brown.

  4. Remove with a skimmer and place on brown paper in the oven to dry.

Serve

  1. Arrange on a hot dish in pairs at right angles.

  2. Sift powdered sugar and cinnamon over them and serve with custard sauce flavored with rum.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rum + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Stale bread (in the method)
Its dry, open crumb soaks up the milk and rum and holds its shape during frying.
Milk
Soaks into the bread, keeping the inside moist and tender after frying.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the soaked milk mixture around the bread.
Rum or liqueur
Adds aroma and flavor to the soaked bread and the custard sauce.
Lard
Fries the bread, creating a golden-brown crust through browning.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until golden-brown. Frying at a steady, hot temperature crisps the outside quickly, so the soaked interior does not turn greasy or fall apart.

“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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