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Fried or French Toast
Cut rather thick slices of stale bread, rounded with a cake-cutter. Put into a deep platter a batter composed of 1 cup of milk, seasoned with a pinch of salt, and 1 egg, well beaten. Dip each piece of bread into the batter until saturated; drain carefully, and fry in hot butter or drippings or in deep fat. Drain, and dust with powdered sugar.
A plain nineteenth-century French toast: no sugar, vanilla or spice in the batter, and the sweetness applied at the end. The proportions are generous on milk, so soaking and draining matter more than usual.
- The hinge: drain properlyOne egg to a cup of milk is a thin batter, and thick bread will drink a great deal of it. Lift each slice and let it drip for several seconds before it goes into the fat, or the centre stays custardy while the outside browns.
- Stale bread is not optionalDay-old or older bread has lost enough moisture to absorb the batter without collapsing. Fresh sandwich bread turns to paste in a thin milk batter of this kind.
- Slice thicknessThe recipe says only "rather thick"; something around 3/4 inch suits the drain-and-fry method, since thinner slices saturate faster.
- The cake-cutterRounding the slices with a cutter was a presentation habit of the period. It costs you the corners; skip it unless you want the neat discs.
- Fat and heatButter alone browns fast at the temperature needed; clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix holds up better. For the deep-fat option, around 350-360F, frying to colour rather than by the clock.
- Powdered sugarSifted confectioners' sugar, dusted while the slices are still hot so it clings. This is the only sweetening in the recipe, so be liberal, or serve syrup alongside.
- YieldOne cup of milk and one egg will coat roughly six thick slices. Scale the batter up by the same ratio; it does not keep once the bread has been through it.
French toast long predates its English name: recipes for bread soaked in milk and egg and fried appear in medieval European cookery, and the dish travels under names such as French pain perdu ("lost bread") and German arme Ritter ("poor knights"), the first of which points at its purpose of rescuing a loaf too dry to slice for the table. The batter here carries nothing but salt, and the sugar arrives only as a dusting at the end. The alternative title "fried toast" suggests the two names were current together.