"Toast and Marmalade for Tea" was an unfinished song by Steve Groves, who had written only verses; Steve Kipner explained, "We had been thinking that we would write a chorus for it together".

The resulting demo was recorded on 27 June 1969 and Maurice Gibb called them into the studio at short notice the following month and re-recorded it for the album.

Kipner and Groves had originally recorded the track on only guitar and piano.

They would usually experiment with whatever was in the studio until Kipner concluded, "There was a drum kit, but the pedal was broken, so I pushed it by hand to make us a drum track, then Maurice put bass on it, playing with his broken arm".

[2] The song's distinct "wobbled" piano melody was discovered accidentally when an engineer leaned on a tape machine creating the sound.