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Mennonite Toast
Beat up three eggs well, add a pint of sweet milk and a pinch of salt; cut slices an inch thick from a loaf of baker's bread , remove crust, dip slices into the eggs and milk, fry like doughnuts in very hot lard or drippings, till a delicate brown, butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve hot. - Mrs. J. P. Rea,
This is deep-fried French toast, and the two things that decide whether it works are the thickness of the bread and the temperature of the fat.
- QuantitiesA pint is two cups of milk, which with three eggs is a thin custard — enough to soak roughly six to eight thick slices. Halve it if you are cooking for two, or you will pour most of it away.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh whole milk, specified because many nineteenth-century recipes called for sour milk or buttermilk instead. Whole milk gives the best result; skim makes a watery custard.
- Baker's breadMeaning a bought plain white loaf rather than a homemade one. A day-old country white cut an inch thick is the closest modern equivalent; fresh sandwich bread will collapse in the fat.
- The soakAn inch-thick slice needs to be dipped, not drowned — a few seconds each side so the crumb takes up custard without saturating the middle. Wet centres steam rather than fry and turn the interior to paste.
- Frying like doughnutsThis means deep or at least half-deep fat, not a buttered griddle. Hold the fat at 350–365F; below that the bread drinks grease, above it the outside browns before the egg inside sets. A neutral oil stands in for lard or drippings without changing the result much.
- Drain before dressingBlot each slice briefly on a rack or paper before buttering, or the butter and powdered sugar will slide off into a slick. Sugar goes on while the toast is still hot so it clings.
- Yield and servingTwo thick slices per person. Fry in small batches and hold on a rack in a 200F oven — stacked on a plate they go soft within minutes.
French toast under some name appears in many American community cookbooks of the period, usually as a way of using bread past its best, and the regional labels attached to it — German toast, Spanish toast, Mennonite toast — tell you more about who contributed the recipe than about any distinct tradition. The Dixie Cook Book, like the Buckeye books it grew out of, was assembled from signed contributions such as this one from Mrs. J. P. Rea, so the name most likely records the household or neighbours it came from. The instruction to fry "like doughnuts" assumes a reader who kept a kettle of lard ready and used it daily, an assumption that receded as commercial vegetable shortening and gas ranges changed the habit in the early twentieth century.