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Breakfast

French Toast

A sweet bread dish made by dipping stale bread in egg and milk, frying, and sprinkling cinnamon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the egg slightly in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and milk to the egg and mix well.

  3. Dip each slice of stale bread into the mixture, coating both sides.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add butter to coat the bottom.

  2. Place the dipped bread in the pan and brown one side.

  3. Add a small piece of butter on top of each slice, then flip and brown the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar or with 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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 to the bread and sets to give the slices a custardy interior.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and keeps the slices moist as they cook.
Stale bread
Dry crumb soaks up the egg mixture well without falling apart.
Butter
Fat that browns the surface of the bread and adds rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetness that caramelises slightly on the surface when sprinkled over the hot toast.

The step that matters

Dip the bread briefly and evenly. Stale bread absorbs the custard quickly, so over-soaking makes slices soggy and prone to tearing in the pan, while under-soaking leaves dry centres. Coating both sides evenly gives a uniform texture and browning.

“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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