A
DECADENT SERVING of French
toast — piled high with fresh fruits and
berries; a scoop of ice cream, whipped
cream or compote; a drizzle of maple
syrup, chocolate sauce or golden honey —
has become synonymous with brunch, but
this is a far cry from the humble
origins of the dish. In its earliest
iterations, French toast was simply a
way to make the most of stale
bread.
This is
evident in the French name for the dish
— pain perdu, which translates
as “lost bread”. For cooks who wanted to
salvage days’ old bread, soaking the
hardened slices in milk and egg until it
grew soft, and then frying it in butter,
made economic sense. Plus, it made for a
filling meal. That it was a poor man’s
dish (at least to begin with) is seen in
the German moniker as well: “arme
ritter” (meaning, poor knight).
Seeing that it
was a dish of the middle and lower
classes, it is somewhat surprising to
note that one of the earliest mentions
of a French toast-like dish was in a
cookbook called Apicius, named
after a Roman noble of the 2nd Century
AD. Under a recipe for “aliter dulcia”
(which, translated from Latin, means
‘otherwise sweet’), the cookbook
instructs the chef to slice white bread
and remove its crust before dunking it
in a mix of egg and milk, then
pan-frying it in oil, and dousing it in
honey.
Also
Read: Try These Five Types
Of French Toast, Including
Bengali!
France too did
have a richer version of the dish, as
recorded by the famed chef Guillame
Tirel — better known as Taillevent — in
his culinary treatise Le
Viandier (c. 14th century).
Taillevent includes directions for a
dish he calls “tostées dorées” (golden
toast). While it hews quite closely to
French toast of today, this medieval
version does not include milk.
To make French
toast that has the perfect consistency —
not too gooey or falling apart, and not
too dry/hard — there’s a simple rule of
thumb: Divide the number of slices you
want to make, by 2, to get the number of
eggs you should use. Divide the number
of eggs by 4 to get the quantity of
milk. The type of bread you use also
makes a difference: you can use brioche
or fine white bread, you could even use
old buns and a stale loaf, if you’re so
inclined. Do remember to toast your
bread until it feels firm to the touch
if you’re using an especially soft/fresh
loaf.
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