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Water Toast
Prepare bread as for Dry Toast, dip in hot salted water, drain, and spread with butter. 3 cups scalded milk 3 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup cold milk
A two-line recipe whose printed text has picked up stray ingredients from the neighbouring cream toast entry. What is actually being described is bread toasted dry, dipped in hot salted water, drained and buttered.
- The stray ingredient listThe "3 cups scalded milk, 3 tablespoons butter, + cup cold milk" cannot belong to water toast, which uses only bread, salted water and butter; it appears to have strayed in from a milk- or cream-based toast recipe nearby. The "+ cup" is a broken fraction in the original setting and cannot be reconstructed with confidence.
- Dry toast, as the book means itBread dried right through rather than merely browned on the surface; the recipe assumes the reader knows the earlier Dry Toast entry. If you are working from a modern toaster, toast the slices, then give them five to eight minutes in a 300F oven so they dry to the centre rather than staying soft inside.
- Salting the waterAbout a teaspoon of salt per quart is enough. Have the water as hot as you can, near boiling; it cools fast and lukewarm water leaves the toast slack.
- The dip is the hingeOne quick pass, no more than a second or two per side. The bread should take up just enough water to soften without collapsing, which is why it must be dried through first.
- DrainingStand the slices at an angle on a rack or tip them against the side of the pan for a moment. Water left on the surface will not emulsify with the butter and the toast turns grey.
- Chafing dish contextIf, as the placement suggests, the toast is meant as a base rather than a finished dish, keep it warm over the hot-water pan of the chafing dish while you make creamed oysters, eggs or cheese to spoon over it.
- Yield and timingNo yield is given; reckon on two slices per person, buttered and served at once. Water toast does not hold; within a few minutes it goes from tender to soggy.
Water toast and its richer cousins, milk toast and cream toast, were invalid cookery before they were breakfast cookery — soft, bland, easily swallowed food prescribed for the sick, the elderly and small children throughout the nineteenth century. Dipping dried toast in hot salted water was the plainest version of the idea, giving the softness of a soaked bread without the fat or the milk that a delicate stomach was thought to reject. The technique had a second life outside the sickroom: by the time Lowney's book was published, the chafing dish was fashionable equipment for late suppers and college-room entertaining, and cooks needed a quick warm base to carry creamed oysters, lobster or Welsh rarebit. The same slice of bread could serve both purposes.