French toast
|
French toast served at a restaurant | |
| Serving temperature | Hot, with toppings |
|---|---|
| Main ingredients | Bread, eggs, milk or cream |
 Cookbook: French toast  Media: French toast | |
French toast, also known as eggy bread,[1] German toast,[2][3] gypsy toast,[4] poor knights (of Windsor),[5] or Spanish toast,[3] is a dish made of bread soaked in beaten eggs and then fried.
History and names
The earliest known reference to French toast is in the Apicius, a collection of Latin recipes dating to the 4th or 5th century; the recipe mentions soaking in milk, but not egg, and gives it no special name, just aliter dulcia "another sweet dish".[6]
Under the names suppe dorate, soupys yn dorye, tostées dorées, and payn purdyeu, the dish was widely known in medieval Europe. For example, Martino da Como offers a recipe. French toast was often served with game birds and meats. The word "soup" in these names refers to bread soaked in a liquid, a sop.[7]
The usual French name is pain perdu 'lost bread', as it is a way to reclaim stale or otherwise "lost" bread. It may also be called pain doré 'gilded bread'.[8] The term pain perdu was formerly used metaphorically to mean sunk costs.[9]
A fourteenth-century German recipe uses the name Arme Ritter ("poor knights"),[3][10] a name also used in English[5] and the Nordic languages. Also in the fourteenth century, Taillevent presented a recipe for "tostées dorées".[11]
There are fifteenth-century English recipes for pain perdu.[3][12][13]
An Austrian and Bavarian term is pafese or pofese, from zuppa pavese, referring to Pavia, Italy.[14]
Preparation and serving
Slices of bread are soaked or dipped in a mixture of beaten eggs, often with milk or cream. Sometimes sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla are added to the mixture. The slices of egg-coated bread are then fried on both sides until they are browned and cooked through. Day-old bread is often recommended by chefs because the stale bread will soak up more egg mixture without falling apart.[15]
The cooked slices may be covered with sugar or sweet toppings such as jam, honey, fruit,[16] or maple syrup, or served as a savory dish with ketchup or another sauce.
Variations
The bread may be dipped in milk only, with the egg mixture added afterwards.[17]
The bread may be soaked in various other liquids, such as wine, rosewater, or orange juice, either before or after cooking.[18][19]
Formerly, the dish was eaten more as a soup than dry.
Local versions
France
In France, pain perdu may be eaten as a dessert, a breakfast, or an afternoon tea snack ("goûter").[20]
Hong Kong
Hong Kong–style French toast is made by deep-frying sliced bread dipped in beaten egg or soy, served with butter, and topped with golden syrup or sometimes honey. It is typically made as a sandwich, with a sweet filling.[21] It is a typical offering in Hong Kong teahouses (cha chaan teng).[22]
Spain
Torrija is a similar recipe traditionally prepared in Spain for Lent and Holy Week.
See also
- Egg in the basket
- List of bread dishes
- List of breakfast foods
- List of brunch foods
- List of egg dishes
- Monte Cristo sandwich
References
- ↑ Beckett, Fiona (18 September 2010). "Student cookbook: French toast (aka eggy bread)". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
- ↑ Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1918). The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown; republished at Bartleby.com, 2000. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
- 1 2 3 4 Koerner, Brendan. "Is French Toast Really French?". Slate.com. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
- ↑ Mille (24 February 2002). "Gypsy Toast". food.com. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
- 1 2 Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., 2006, s.v. 'poor' S3
- ↑ Joseph Dommers Vehling, trans., Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, Book VII, chapter 13, recipe 296 full text at Gutenberg
- ↑ Odile Redon, et al., The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, 2000, p. 207f
- ↑ Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé s.v. 'pain'
- ↑ Gabriel Meurier, Christoffel Plantijn, Vocabulaire francois-flameng, 1562 p. 83
- ↑ Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Deutsches Wörterbuch, quoting from the Buch von guter Spyse.
- ↑ Pichon, Jérôme; Vicaire, Georges (1892). Le Viandier de Guillaume Tirel dit Taillevent. p. 262.
- ↑ Austin, T. Two 15th-century Cookery-books, 1888, quoting a 1450 recipe, quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary
- ↑ Davidson, Alan; Jaine, Tom (2006). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-19-280681-5.
- ↑ Ulrich Ammon, Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen: die Standardsprache in Österreich, der Schweiz und Deutschland sowie in Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Ostbelgien und Südtirol, 2004, ISBN 3110165759, p. 552
- ↑ Alton, Brown. "French Toast-Food Network".
- ↑ "French Toast Toppings – Unique French Toast Recipes". Good Housekeeping. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
- ↑ Compleat Cook (1659) as quoted in the OED
- ↑ John Ayto, The Diner's Dictionary: Word Origins of Food and Drink, ISBN 0199640246, p. 142
- ↑ Adam Islip, A Dictionarie [sic] of the French and English Tongues, 1611, full text
- ↑ (French) Wikipedia article about the pain perdu
- ↑ "40 Hong Kong foods we can't live without", CNN Go, 13 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-09
- ↑ CNN Go World's 50 most delicious foods 21 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-11
Further reading
- Claiborne, Craig (1985). Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Food Encyclopedia. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-8129-1271-3.
- Farmer, Fannie (1918). The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
- Mariani, John F. (1999). The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink. New York: Lebhar-Friedman. ISBN 0-86730-784-6.
- Redon, Odilie (1998). The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-70684-2.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to French toast. |
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Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on |
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Wikiquote has quotations related to: French toast |
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