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Bread

Cream Toast

Cream Toast is toasted bread topped with a hot mixture of cream, butter, eggs, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread slices until golden brown.

  2. Place the toasted bread in a covered dish and pour boiling water over it.

  3. Drain the water from the bread.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream and add the butter, beaten eggs, and cornstarch.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it over the toast.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Eggs
Thicken the cream as they set when heated, giving the sauce body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that clings to the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Rich sweet cream
Forms the base of the sauce, providing moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Eggs can curdle if overheated, while cornstarch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken. Heat gently while stirring, then boil just until the sauce thickens.

“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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