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French Toast

French Toast is a dish of stale bread dipped in beaten eggs and milk, fried in butter, served with cinnamon, brown sugar or maple 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

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

  2. Dip the stale bread slices in the egg mixture.

Cook

  1. Heat a well-buttered griddle over medium heat.

  2. Brown the bread on one side, then place 1 teaspoon of butter on each slice.

  3. Turn the bread and brown on the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with cinnamon and brown sugar or maple syrup and butter.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 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

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and set into a tender, custardy coating when cooked.
Milk
Adds moisture that soaks into the bread and keeps the centre soft.
Stale bread
Dry crumb soaks up the egg mixture without falling apart, giving structure and a soft interior.
Butter
Fat that helps the surface brown evenly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Dip the stale bread slices in the egg mixture.. Stale bread absorbs liquid well, but soaking too long makes slices soggy and fragile, so dip briefly until just saturated.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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