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French Toast
12 slices white bread cut about one-fourth inch thick 2 eggs Mazola 1 tablespoon Karo 1 pint milk 1/8 teaspoon salt Beat the eggs, add the milk, Karo and salt. Dip the bread in this, one slice at a time, drain a moment and fry in sufficient Mazola to keep from sticking. Turn only once. Serve immediately as the main dish, with broiled bacon, or as a breakfast, luncheon or supper dish with Karo, or fruit syrup.
This comes from a corn-products promotional booklet, so two of the four ingredients are brand names that need translating. Otherwise the method is sound; the custard is just leaner than most cooks use today.
- MazolaCorn oil, then as now. Any neutral oil works, and butter or a butter-oil mix gives better browning and flavour if you are not bound to the sponsor.
- KaroCorn syrup; the recipe does not specify light or dark, though light is the likelier reading. The tablespoon in the batter adds a little sweetness and probably helps browning; honey or sugar would serve much the same purpose.
- The custard is thinTwo eggs to a pint of milk is well short of the egg in most modern recipes, which commonly run two to four times richer. It soaks in fast and cooks to something closer to fried bread than to a custardy interior. Four eggs per pint would give more richness.
- BreadQuarter-inch slices of soft white bread will fall apart if left in the batter. Dip one slice at a time as instructed, count to three, and lift. Day-old bread holds up considerably better than fresh.
- Pan heatThe recipe specifies none; medium heat, in the region of 350F in the fat, is a modern suggestion. Too hot and the outside colours before the egg sets; too cool and the bread drinks oil. Turn only once, as written, so the surface stays intact.
- Quantity of batterA pint of milk plus two eggs is generous for twelve thin slices; expect leftover batter rather than a shortfall.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; twelve slices would serve roughly four as a main dish with bacon, or six as part of a larger breakfast.
French toast is far older than the corn syrup in it: recipes for bread soaked in egg and milk and fried appear in medieval European cookery, and English manuscripts of the period give versions under names such as 'payn perdu'. The gloss 'lost bread', explained as a way of rescuing loaves too stale to eat plain, is the traditional account of the name, though medieval versions did not always call for stale bread. What dates this particular version is the branding: Karo and Mazola were both products of the Corn Products Refining Company, which issued promotional booklets of this kind, and recipes in such booklets tend to find a use for the sponsor's goods -- hence a tablespoon of syrup in a batter that does not obviously need it.