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Milk Toast
Slice some bread, toast it of a nice light brown on both sides. Boil a pint of milk; mix together two tea-spoonfuls of flour in a little cold water; stir this into the boiling milk. Let it boil about one minute; then add a little salt, and stir into it two ounces of butter. Dip the toast in the milk, place it on a dish, and pour the remainder of the milk over it. The toast may be made much richer by increasing the quantity of butter.
A plain nursery-and-invalid dish that hinges on timing: the toast must go into the milk at the last moment, and be served at once.
- Quantities in modern termsA pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz or about 2½ US cups; 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons. Two teaspoons of flour in a pint gives only a very light nap, barely thicker than cream.
- Slurry, not lumpsMix the flour with a tablespoon or two of cold water until smooth before it goes near the pan, and pour it into the milk while whisking. Raw flour whisked into hot milk sets into knots instantly.
- Cook the flour outOne minute at a boil is the minimum for the starch to swell and lose its raw taste. Keep the heat moderate and stir the base of the pan constantly — thin milk sauces catch and scorch quickly.
- Butter off the heatStir the butter in after the boil so it emulsifies rather than splits. The instruction to make it "much richer" with more butter is sound; 3–4 oz gives something closer to a sauce.
- The toastToast it dry and firm, on the darker side of light brown. Pale, soft toast disintegrates the moment it hits the milk; a well-browned crust holds its shape long enough to reach the table.
- SaltThe original gives no measure, only "a little salt." Start with a scant ¼ teaspoon in a pint and taste.
- YieldA pint of milk and four to six slices serves two as a supper dish, or one as a substantial breakfast.
- Serve immediatelyThere is no holding this. Within a few minutes the toast has drunk the milk and gone to paste, which is why the recipe has you dip and dish in one motion.
Milk toast belongs to the large family of British and American "sop" dishes — bread softened in a hot liquid — and by the nineteenth century it had settled firmly into the sickroom and the nursery. Cookery books of the period grouped it with beef tea, gruel and arrowroot as food for invalids and small children: bland, warm, easily swallowed, and cheap enough that no household need be without the makings. "Graveyard stew" is recorded as a later American nickname for milk toast, a nod to how thoroughly the dish was associated with the ailing.