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German Toast
3 eggs ½ teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 cup milk 6 slices stale bread Beat eggs slightly, add salt, sugar, and milk; strain into a shallow dish. Soak bread in mixture until soft. Cook on a hot, well-greased griddle; brown on one side, turn and brown other side. Serve for breakfast or luncheon, or with a sauce for dessert.
This is French toast under its older American name, and it is nearly identical to what most cooks make now. A few details of the 1896 kitchen are worth translating.
- The hinge: stale breadFresh soft bread collapses in the custard and sticks to the griddle. Use bread a day or two old, cut about ¾ inch thick; if yours is fresh, dry the slices in a 300F oven for ten minutes first.
- Strain the custardThe instruction to strain is not fussiness. It removes the chalazae and any unbeaten white, which otherwise cook into rubbery threads on the surface of the toast.
- Soak time"Until soft" means soaked through but not falling apart, roughly 30 seconds a side for ordinary sandwich bread, a minute or more for a dense loaf. Press gently and let excess drip off before it hits the pan.
- The griddleA cast-iron griddle or heavy skillet over medium heat, around 350F, greased with butter or a neutral fat. Too hot and the egg browns before the interior sets; too cool and the bread soaks up grease.
- DonenessThe centre should be set, not wet. Two to three minutes a side is usual, and slices can be held on a rack in a 200F oven while the rest cook.
- YieldSix slices, serving two to three at breakfast.
- The dessert version"With a sauce" points to one of the book's dessert sauces, such as a hard sauce, a syrup, or a thin custard sauce.
American cookbooks of the nineteenth century used "German toast," "French toast" and "poor knights" more or less interchangeably for bread soaked in egg and milk and fried. The dish itself is far older than any of those labels: soaking stale bread in eggs and milk to make it palatable again is a thrift technique recorded across medieval Europe, and the German Arme Ritter and English "poor knights of Windsor" are traditionally said to carry that sense of making do. Fannie Farmer places it in the bread chapter rather than among breakfast dishes. The suggestion to serve it with a sauce for dessert reflects a period habit of moving one preparation across several meals rather than cooking something separate.