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Milk Toast

Bread toasted and topped with a warm milk and butter mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Milk Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the desired amount of bread.

  2. Boil 1 quart of milk.

Make the sauce

  1. When nearly boiling, mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a little milk to make a thin paste.

  2. Stir the cornstarch paste, a lump of butter, and ½ teaspoon of salt into the milk.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the toasted bread in a dish, pouring some of the milk mixture over each piece. Do not dip the bread into the milk.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes a thickened, creamy sauce for the bread.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Bread
Soaks up the thickened milk sauce, giving the dish its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the cornstarch paste into the milk. Cornstarch must be mixed into a thin paste first, then added to nearly boiling milk. Dry starch added directly clumps, and it only thickens fully once the mixture is hot enough for the starch granules to swell.

“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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