Skip to main content
Main

Toast Sandwiches

A sandwich made with toasted stale bread, cream, butter, optional nutmeg and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Toast Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Toast the stale bread carefully until golden.

  2. Spread hot cream on one slice of toast.

  3. Place the cream-covered toast between two slices of buttered bread.

  4. Optionally, add a dash of nutmeg and a little sugar to the cream.

  5. Cut the sandwiches into oblong fingers.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Thin stale bread
Toasting dries the bread so it crisps and browns, giving the sandwich structure and a golden crunch.
Cream
Hot cream soaks into the toast, adding moisture and richness to the filling.
Butter
Butter on the outer slices adds fat that browns and gives the bread a rich, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Toast the stale bread carefully until golden. Toast that is pale or burnt will not hold the hot cream well. Even golden browning dries the surface enough to stay crisp while the cream soaks in slightly.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, butter, sugar):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes