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French Toast
12 slices bread 1/2 inch thick 3 eggs 2 cups milk 1/2 teaspoon salt Powdered sugar Beat the eggs, add the milk and salt. Dip slices of bread into this mixture and saute in a little hot fat until a delicate brown. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve hot.
A plain custard-dipped bread with no sweetening in the batter — the sugar goes on at the end. The proportions are generous with milk, so the bread you choose matters more than anything else.
- Use dry breadHalf-inch slices of firm, day-old white bread will absorb the custard without collapsing. Fresh sandwich bread and soft modern loaves turn to paste in a mixture this thin; if the bread is fresh, dry the slices in a 300F oven for ten minutes first.
- The custard is thin by designThree eggs to two cups of milk is a loose ratio, wetter than a batter meant only to coat. Dip briefly, a few seconds a side, rather than letting slices sit; some modern recipes use more egg to the same quantity of milk for a firmer set.
- "Powdered sugar"In American books of this period the term usually means what is now sold as confectioners' or icing sugar, though it was sometimes applied to any finely ground sugar. Either works here; cinnamon sugar is not part of this recipe.
- "A little hot fat"Butter is the usual choice and gives the best flavour, but it browns fast — use clarified butter, or half butter and half neutral oil, over medium heat. Too hot and the outside colours before the egg inside sets.
- Cook it throughBecause the slices carry a good deal of raw egg custard, "a delicate brown" is not on its own a doneness test. Give each side three to four minutes at moderate heat so the centre is set rather than wet.
- YieldTwelve slices serves four to six. Two and a half cups of liquid is generous for that many slices, so expect some custard to be left in the bowl.
- Holding a batchKeep finished slices in a single layer on a rack in a 200F oven. Stacking them on a plate steams the crust soft.
French toast is the English name for what French cooks call pain perdu, "lost bread" — a name associated with using up loaves gone too stale to serve at table. Egg-and-milk soaked fried bread appears in European cookery long before it acquired a nationality in English, and the dish has been recorded under many names across Europe. New Delineator Recipes came out of the domestic pages of The Delineator, a women's magazine, and its recipes are written for households cooking three meals a day with no interest in wasting a loaf. This batter carries no sugar, vanilla or spice; the sweetness is added at the table, where it could be adjusted or omitted.