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Buttered Toast
Toast stale bread until crisp and a rich brown on both sides. Butter while hot with good, fresh, cold butter, and serve hot.
A four-line recipe whose whole argument rests on two choices: bread that is a day or two old, and butter that goes on cold while the toast is hot.
- Stale bread is the pointDay-old bread has lost some surface moisture, so it tends to brown rather than steam, and it slices cleanly without tearing. Fresh bread is likelier to toast unevenly and stay damp inside.
- Slice thicknessThe book gives no thickness; hand-cut slices are assumed. A thin slice will dry through into a crisp, a thick one will stay soft inside.
- What 'toast' meant hereIn a 1911 kitchen this was done on a rack or fork in front of a coal fire or in the oven of a range, turning the bread by hand. A broiler or toaster oven gives the closest equivalent to the direct radiant heat; a pop-up toaster works but browns less evenly at the edges.
- Rich brown, not darkAim for an even tan across the whole face; scorched patches taste bitter. The recipe asks for both sides.
- Cold butter on hot toastThe instruction is deliberate. Firm butter drawn across hot bread melts as it goes and stays near the surface; softened butter soaks straight through and leaves the toast limp.
- ServingToast held in a covered dish quickly steams itself soft. If it must wait, stand the slices on edge in a rack so air moves around them.
Buttered toast earns a place in a bread chapter because toast was the backbone of invalid cookery, nursery meals and late suppers. The Butterick book belongs to the era of the toasting fork and the coal range, and instructions like this one -- brown both sides, butter while hot -- read as a small piece of technique transferred from hearth to range. The insistence on "good, fresh, cold butter" reflects a period when butter quality varied enormously between the dairy, the grocer's tub and the new factory creameries, and when rancid butter was a common complaint rather than a rarity.