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Toast Water
2 slices bread 3 pints boiling water. 2 tablespoons currant jelly Cut the bread half an inch thick; toast very brown on both sides, but do not scorch. Break them in pieces; pour the boiling water over them; add the currant jelly and stir until it is thoroug'nly dissolved. When cold, strain and serve, adding cracked ice if desired.
A sickroom drink rather than a beverage for pleasure: toasted bread infused in boiling water, sweetened and coloured with currant jelly. It works, but only if the toast is taken further than you would want to eat.
- ProportionsThe surviving text gives only the currant jelly; the quantities of bread and water are missing, though "break them in pieces" implies more than one slice. Comparable sickroom recipes tend to use one or two thick slices of toast to a pint or quart of boiling water; scale the jelly up or down from the two tablespoons given.
- Toast it hardThe whole flavour comes from browning. Take the bread to a deep, even mahogany on both sides under a broiler or in a dry pan. Any black patch turns the water bitter and cannot be strained out.
- Bread to useA plain white loaf, slightly stale, cut half an inch thick. Enriched sandwich bread with added sugar scorches before it browns evenly.
- SteepingPour the water on boiling, cover, and leave until cold, an hour or more. Steeping longer gives a stronger infusion; it does not need heat once the water is on.
- StrainingPass through a fine sieve lined with muslin or a coffee filter. The liquid should be clear amber; anything cloudy with crumb tastes pasty.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly is still sold, usually near the preserves. It contributes acidity as much as sweetness, so redcurrant is a closer substitute than grape or apple. Stir it into the water while hot so it dissolves fully.
- Yield and servingYield depends on how much water you use, the recipe naming none. Serve chilled over cracked ice, as the recipe allows; best made the day it is wanted.
Toast water was one of the standard invalid drinks of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household cookery, sitting alongside barley water, beef tea and gruel in the chapter that general cookbooks commonly devoted to feeding the sick. Whatever the reasoning, the toast gave the water enough colour and roasted flavour that a patient with no appetite might drink it, and currant jelly appears often in these recipes for its sharpness. Recipes of this kind gradually disappeared from cookbooks over the twentieth century.