Milk toast

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Milk toast is a breakfast food consisting mainly, though not entirely, of toasted bread dipped in or covered in hot milk into which a small amount of butter has been melted. Cinnamon and raisins may be added. Milk toast was a popular food throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century, especially for young children and for the ailing, for whom the food was thought to be soothing and easy to digest. Although not as popular today, milk toast is still considered a comfort food.

The celebrated food writer M. F. K. Fisher called milk toast a "warm, mild, soothing thing, full of innocent strength," and wrote, of eating milk toast in a famed restaurant with a convalescent friend, that the food was "a small modern miracle of gastronomy." She noted that milk toast was "an instinctive palliative, something like boiled water."

Milk toast's soft blandness inspired the timid and ineffectual comic strip character Caspar Milquetoast, drawn by Harold Webster from 1924 to 1952. The term "milquetoast" is still used today to refer to a person of weak character or principles.

[edit] Milk Toast in Asia

There is a dessert called milk toast which is served in many countries in milk cafes in Asia like Milk Plus and Chinese Bakeries in the US like Maria's. It consists of bread with a condensed milk on top. Often the condensed milk is flavoured with honeydew, taro, or some other fruit.