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Breakfast

French Toast

French toast is bread soaked in egg and milk, fried in butter, and sprinkled with sugar.

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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bread as you would for ordinary toast.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg well and add the milk.

  3. Soak a slice of bread in the egg and milk mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the soaked bread in butter until nicely toasted on both sides.

  2. Sprinkle white sugar over the toast before serving.

  3. You can serve the slices separately or stack them.

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).

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaks up the egg and milk mixture, giving the slices a custard-like interior.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the soaked bread set when fried.
Milk
Provides moisture that softens the bread and carries the egg into it.
Butter
Fries the slices, adding fat that browns the outside and adds flavor.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior look golden and caramelized.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread in butter until nicely toasted on both sides. Frying over moderate heat lets the egg set inside while the sugars and proteins on the surface brown. Too much heat browns the outside before the center cooks through.

“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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