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Breakfast Toast
Add to one-half pint of sweet milk two table-spoons sugar, a little salt and a well-beaten egg; dip in this slices of bread (if dry, let it soak a minute), and fry on a buttered griddle until it is a light brown on each side. This is a good way to use dry bread. - Mrs. Dr. Morey, Marysville, Ohio.
French toast under a plainer name, with a custard that is thinner and sweeter than most modern versions. A few notes before you start.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup. "Sweet milk" simply means fresh whole milk, as distinct from the sour or buttermilk that appears elsewhere in the book. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- The egg ratio is lightOne egg to a cup of milk gives a batter that soaks in fast but sets softly, which is why the recipe is aimed at stale bread that can absorb it without collapsing. Fresh, soft sandwich bread will go to mush; use bread at least a day old, cut thick.
- Griddle heatModerate. The recipe asks only for "a light brown on each side," and the sugar in the custard will help the surface colour before the interior sets if the pan is too hot, so keep the heat down rather than pushing it.
- Butter the griddle, not the breadButter burns at griddle heat. Wipe the surface with butter before each batch rather than adding a pool of it, or use a mix of butter and a neutral oil.
- "Let it soak a minute"That is genuinely about right for dry bread and too long for anything soft. A few seconds a side is enough unless the slices are hard.
- YieldThe recipe gives no count. A cup of milk with one egg will coat something like four to six slices of ordinary bread, depending on thickness.
- ServingThe recipe stops at the griddle and names no accompaniment. Butter and sugar, maple, or a fruit sauce all suit it; note that the batter is already sweetened.
Buckeye Cookery (1877, from Marysville, Ohio, and compiled from contributions by named local women) is a thrift book as much as a cookbook, and this entry says so outright: "a good way to use dry bread." Egg-and-milk-soaked fried bread is very old and very widespread ” it appears in medieval European manuscripts, and English cooks knew it as "poor knights" or "pain perdu," lost bread. The American name "French toast" was in print by the nineteenth century, though this book files the dish under a plainer heading.