Home › Breads, Biscuit and Rolls › Fried Toast
Fried Toast
Beat three eggs, add one pint of sweet milk and a pinch of salt. Dip inch-thick slices of baker's bread from which the crust has been cut into this mixture and fry in very hot lard or drippings until a delicate brown. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve hot.
This is French toast under an older name, and the one thing that separates it from a soggy failure is fat that is genuinely hot before the bread goes in.
- Fat temperature"Very hot lard" means fat hot enough that a corner of bread sizzles the moment it touches, somewhere around 350-375F in modern terms. Below that the custard-soaked slices absorb grease and collapse; the surface needs to set on contact.
- Sweet milkIn period cookbooks "sweet milk" simply distinguishes fresh milk from sour or buttermilk, which were common kitchen staples. Ordinary whole milk is what is meant.
- The batter is thinThree eggs to a pint (2 cups) of milk gives a loose custard. Dip briefly rather than soaking, or inch-thick slices will take on more liquid than they can hold and break apart in the pan.
- Baker's breadThis distinguishes a bought loaf from a home-baked one: a plain commercial white loaf, generally firmer than modern soft sandwich bread. A day-old brioche, challah or country white cut an inch thick behaves closest to the original; very fresh soft bread will fall apart.
- Lard and drippingsBoth fry cleanly at high heat and were what was on hand. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil to raise the smoke point, gives the same browning without a savory note from beef fat.
- Powdered sugarPeriod "powdered" sugar was finely ground granulated or loaf sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Either works here; confectioners' sugar simply clings better.
- YieldThe custard should stretch to roughly eight inch-thick slices, enough for about four, though the recipe states no yield. Fry in batches and hold finished slices in a low oven (about 200F) rather than stacking them, which steams the crust soft.
Fried toast, pain perdu, German toast, French toast: the dish has collected names for centuries because it is less a recipe than a use for stale bread, soaked in egg and milk and fried so that nothing is wasted. Versions appear in medieval European manuscripts and in English cookery long before the American nineteenth century. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, also issued cook books aimed at home managers; the tone here is plain and brief, assuming the reader already knows how a frying pan behaves.