Skip to main content
Breakfast

French Toast

A sweetened bread dish fried in egg and milk, served hot with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg with the sugar in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the milk until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the trimmed bread slices into the egg mixture.

  2. Fry the dipped bread in hot butter or lard until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve hot.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 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

Eggs
Bind the milk and sugar into a custard that coats the bread and sets when cooked.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms the liquid base of the egg custard.
Bread
Soaks up the custard, then browns and crisps in the fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown when fried.
Butter or lard
Fries the coated bread, adding richness and promoting golden browning.

The step that matters

Fry the dipped bread in hot butter or lard until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the bread soaks up oil and turns greasy before the egg sets and browns. Medium-high heat sears the surface quickly so the custard cooks through and the crust turns golden.

“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

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes