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Lemon Toast
E. A. Forsyth.
Take the yolks of six eggs, beat them well and add three cups of sweet milk; take baker's bread not too stale and cut into slices; dip them into the milk and eggs, and lay the slices into a spider, with sufficient melted butter hot to fry a nice delicate brown; take the whites of the six eggs, and beat them to a froth, adding a large cup of white sugar; add the juice of two lemons, heating well, and adding two cups boiling water; serve over the toast as a sauce, and you will find it a very delicious dish.
This is enriched French toast with a foamy lemon sauce poured over it. The recipe divides six eggs between the two parts, so read it through before you start beating anything.
- A spider is a skilletThe spider was a cast-iron frying pan, usually on short legs, meant to stand over coals. A heavy 10- or 12-inch skillet over moderate heat does the same job.
- Sweet milkThis simply means fresh whole milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that shared the same larder. No substitution needed.
- Yolks only in the batterSix yolks to three cups of milk gives a rich, custardy soak but a batter that browns fast because of the fat and no white to set it. Keep the heat moderate or the outside colours before the centre warms through.
- Baker's bread, not too staleA sturdy white loaf a day or two old, cut thick, around three-quarters of an inch. Modern sandwich bread is too soft and will collapse in three cups of custard; use a firm-crumbed loaf and dip rather than soak.
- "Heating well" is probably "beating well"The sauce direction almost certainly means beat the whites, sugar and lemon juice well before the boiling water goes in. Nineteenth-century compilations were typeset from handwritten submissions and this kind of slip is common.
- The sauce is barely cookedTwo cups of boiling water whisked into six beaten whites will warm the foam but will not reliably bring it to 160F. If that matters in your household, use pasteurized whites, or set the sauce over a pan of simmering water and whisk until it thickens slightly.
- Sauce consistencyAs written this is a thin, frothy pouring sauce rather than a curd; it will separate into foam and liquid within minutes. Make it last, off the heat, and take it straight to the table.
- YieldThree cups of custard will coat roughly twelve to fourteen thick slices, enough for six people. The sauce is generous for that number.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by local women and sold for charity, which is why many entries carry a donor's name as this one does. Lemon toast belongs to the long family of pain perdu, the thrifty European trick of reviving day-old bread in egg and milk, but the American versions of the period tend, as here, to abandon thrift entirely: six eggs, three cups of milk and a cup of sugar make it a dessert rather than a way of using up a stale loaf. The foamy lemon sauce is a fixture of the same books, appearing over puddings, dumplings and steamed cakes throughout the nineteenth century, and takes its body from the beaten egg white.