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French Toast

A dish of stale bread dipped in beaten eggs and milk, then fried in butter or lard.

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. Butter each side of the stale light bread.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix with a little milk.

  3. Dip the bread in the egg mixture, covering both sides.

Fry

  1. Fry the bread in hot lard until golden brown, turning to cook both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + eggtop 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

Stale light bread
Forms the base; its dry, open crumb soaks up the egg mixture well.
Eggs
Set when cooked, binding the custard coating into a firm, tender crust.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats the bread evenly and keeps the inside moist.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the bread and helps it brown.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts steady heat, browning the outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. Frying in hot fat too briefly leaves the egg coating raw, while too long or too hot burns the outside before the custard sets. Turning gives even browning and a set interior.

“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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