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Milk Toast, No. 2

A simple dish of toasted bread topped with butter and hot milk, optionally salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into very thin slices.

  2. Toast the slices quickly until light brown.

  3. Butter the hot toast and pile it in a deep dish.

Serve

  1. Cover the toast with rich boiling milk.

  2. Let it stand for a few minutes before serving.

  3. Add a little salt if necessary.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the milk and gives the dish its body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the hot toast and helps it carry the milk.
Milk
Provides the moisture and softens the toast while adding creamy richness.

The step that matters

Covering the toast with boiling milk. Toast must be hot and crisp enough to hold its shape. Pouring the milk on too early or over soggy toast makes the bread collapse into a mush.

“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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