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Dessert

Snow Flake Toast

A custard-like sauce served over toast or zwieback, topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Flake Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk, cream, and salt in a pot until boiling.

  2. Thicken with flour mixed in a little cold milk.

Make the snowflake mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Pour a cup of the sauce into the beaten egg whites, stirring constantly to create a light mixture.

  3. Add the remaining sauce to the egg mixture and keep hot without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve over slices of zwieback or toast that have been moistened with milk or hot water.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it liquid and body once thickened.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they make the mixture light and airy.

The step that matters

Folding the sauce into the beaten egg whites. Stirring constantly while pouring in the hot sauce keeps the foam light. Adding it too fast or without stirring can deflate the whites and cook them unevenly.

“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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