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Drink

Toast Water, or Crust Coffee

A beverage made by steeping toasted 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: Bread and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,789 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Toast Water, or Crust Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Toast the crusts of bread until browned, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Place the browned crusts in a large pitcher and pour boiling water over them.

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

  4. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

Serve

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

  2. Warm with cream and sugar if preferred.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crusts of bread
Toasted crusts provide the roasted, coffee-like flavour and colour of the brew.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour from the toasted crusts as it steeps.
Sweetener
Adds sweetness to balance the toasted, slightly bitter flavour.

The step that matters

Toast the crusts until browned, not burnt. Toasting drives the browning reactions that create the roasted flavour. Burnt crusts turn acrid and bitter, and that taste carries into the brew.

“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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