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Buttered Toast
Cut slices rather more than a quarter of an inch thick, from a stale loaf, and toast them on both sides before a clear, bright fire; have a hot plate ready to put them on, and butter according to taste. Some like both sides buttered. Pare off the crusts, cover up, and serve hot. For dry toast the slices should be cut thin, and held at a distance from the fire to make them crisp. A little movement of the hand will help this.
A method rather than a formula, and one written for an open coal or wood fire. The differences from a modern toaster are worth knowing because they explain the instructions.
- Stale bread is the pointA day-old loaf has lost enough surface moisture to brown evenly rather than steam. Fresh bread toasts unevenly and goes limp under butter.
- Thickness"Rather more than a quarter of an inch" is a little over 6 mm — around the thickness of thin-sliced bagged bread, thicker than melba-thin. Cut it yourself from an unsliced loaf if you want the texture described.
- A clear, bright fireThis means a fire burnt down past the smoke to glowing coals, so the bread browns by radiant heat and picks up no soot. Under a domestic grill or broiler, use the highest setting with the rack close, or a toaster on a medium-dark setting.
- Butter it hot, off the heatThe hinge of the whole thing: the toast must go straight onto a warmed plate and be buttered while it is still hot enough to absorb the fat. Butter on cooled toast sits on the surface as a greasy film.
- Cover upCovering or napkin-wrapping buttered toast keeps it hot, at the cost of softening it. If you prefer crisp toast, skip the cover and serve at once.
- Dry toast is a different thingThin slices held well back from the fire dry all the way through instead of crusting on the outside. The nearest modern equivalent is a low oven, around 275–300F, until the slices are crisp and pale. It was standard invalid and nursery food.
In a late-Victorian household buttered toast was a genuine test of fire management: only a fire that had burnt clear of smoke would brown bread without tainting it, and judging that state was a skill a cook was expected to have. "Toast" comes through French from Latin torrere, to parch or scorch. Toasting forks and freestanding toasting racks were kitchen fixtures long before the electric toaster became common in British homes, which was broadly an interwar development. The distinction drawn between buttered toast and dry toast also reflects period dietetics, dry toast being routinely prescribed for invalids and small children on the grounds that thoroughly dried bread was easier to digest than soft.