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Toasts, Princess
Crack two fresh eggs in a bowl, briskly beat with a whisk for one minute, add one ounce sugar, two gills milk and half teaspoon vanilla essence. Cut from a stale loaf of French bread twelve thin slices. Heat in a large frying pan three tablespoons melted butter; steep each slice of bread in the custard for half minute, then place in the frying pan, one beside another, and brown for two minutes on each side. Lift up with a skimmer, thoroughly drain on a towel for two minutes, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve hot.
This is French toast under a dining-room name, written for a cook who already knows the technique. The measures are the only real obstacle.
- Two gills of milkA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. With two eggs that gives a thin, milky custard rather than a rich one.
- An ounce of sugarWeight, not volume: about 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar. The custard is only lightly sweetened because more sugar goes on at the end.
- Stale French breadThe staleness is the point. Day-old bread absorbs custard without collapsing; fresh crumb turns to paste in the pan. Cut the slices thin, as directed, so a half-minute soak is enough to reach the centre.
- Half a minute in the custardShort by modern habit, but correct for thin slices of dry bread. Longer soaking on thin bread gives a slice that breaks apart on the skimmer.
- Three tablespoons of butter for twelve slicesExpect to add more between batches, and to keep the pan at a steady medium heat. Butter alone browns fast and can blacken before the second batch is done.
- SkimmerA flat perforated lifter. A slotted spatula or fish slice does the same job.
- Draining on a towelTwo minutes on cloth or paper before the powdered sugar goes on, otherwise the sugar dissolves into the surface fat instead of sitting on top.
- YieldTwelve thin slices would serve roughly four at breakfast, or more as part of a larger meal. The custard quantity looks tight for twelve slices; scale it up rather than stretch it.
Pain perdu — "lost bread" — is the older name for the technique, and it was associated with thrift: bread too dry to eat was soaked in milk and egg and fried back into something worth serving. By the time this book was written the dish had moved up the menu, and the suffix "Princess" is consistent with the restaurant habit of attaching a courtly name to an otherwise plain preparation, though the naming of this particular dish is not documented. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book in that idiom: hundreds of short, precise entries written for a professional cook, with quantities given in gills and ounces and the finishing touch — the folded napkin under the toast — treated as part of the recipe rather than an afterthought.