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French toast isn't French.
How dare you sir.
But it doesn't matter because it's freaking delicious.
The ancient Romans gobbled it up and recipes for it appear all over Medieval Europe
like this recipe from 15th century Italy.
Medieval Italian French toast this time on Tasting History.
So originally I was going to make the ancient Roman version of French toast from Apicius called Aliter Dolcia
or another sweet but it is so simple I thought you know what I could just make this into a Short
which I have and that'll be up later this week but for the full episode I figure I needed to do something a little more decadent,
and there is nothing more decadent than the 15th century recipes of the Italian gourmand Maestro Martino da Como.
His recipe is called suppa dorata
which if it was translated today would mean golden soup or gilded soup but this recipe is so old
the word soup didn't even mean soup yet because suppa referred to the bread that was added to soup.
In English they were called sippets and I talked about them just last month in the video on milk soup
but just like the recipe itself these sippets are much fancier.
"Suppa dorata - Golden Sippets. Take slices of bread trimmed of their crusts and make them squares, lightly toasted so they are colored by the fire on all sides.
Then beat eggs with plenty of sugar and a little rose water and soak the bread slices in this;
carefully remove them and fry them quickly in a pan with a little butter and lard turning them often so they do not burn.
Then arrange them on a platter, and put on top a little rose water made yellow with saffron and a generous amount of sugar."
So before we jump into the cooking I just want to share something that I think is pretty cool.
Today I got a box from my publisher and in it
it had the very first few copies of the Tasting History cookbook it's beautiful and
they got my name right Max Miller.
Also for those who have pre-ordered and live here in the United States instructions will be coming very soon on how you can get a signed copy.
If you live internationally or if you haven't pre-ordered yet you can get signed copies through one of two retailers.
I'm going to put their links in the description probably in the comment of this video
and yeah, I'm super excited to share this with you the the pictures turned out out fantastic
and since obviously this is already printed the French toast didn't make it in so let me tell you what you need for this French toast.
6 to 8 thick slices of fine whole wheat bread, 6 eggs,
3 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of rose water, 4 tablespoons of salted butter,
4 tablespoons of lard and then for the topping you'll need 2 more tablespoons of rose water,
a small pinch of saffron threads and plenty more sugar for dusting.
Now you'll notice right away there are several differences between this recipe and a modern French toast.
First of all the flavors, this was a time before maple syrup in Europe and so they were reliant on things like rose water
and saffron to flavor it so that should be pretty interesting.
Also modern French toast is usually in a custard of milk and eggs. This is only in eggs,
what's interesting is the ancient Roman version is only in milk they just they couldn't bring those two things together for a while it seems.
But regardless, prepare your bread by cutting off the crusts to make squares and then toast them.
and you don't want this slices burned but you do want them nice and brown.
Then beat the eggs until they're smooth and pass them through a sieve.
Maestro Martino actually doesn't mention straining the eggs but most of the other Medieval recipes do and it is a good practice so I would do it.
Then whisk in the 3 tablespoons of sugar and the 2 tablespoons of rose water.
Then set the slices of bread in the egg coating on both sides,
and then you leave the bread to soak and Martino is not specific in how long he wants you to soak though he does say
that they'll need to be removed carefully so I am going to guess they're rather sodden. Today a lot of people like
dip it on both sides and that's it and some people let it sit for 20 minutes or so.
This is going to be closer to that 20 minutes. I would do at least 10 minutes on each side
especially if you have pretty thick slices because you want the egg to get all the way through it
and since it's toasted it's not the easiest thing to get that egg to soak up.
Now while they soak add the butter and the lard to a pan and heat them up. Now if you don't want to use lard,
if you just want to use butter, you can but use clarified butter because the lard actually raises
the smoke point of the butter which is pretty low otherwise you're going to have a lot of burning
and I promise you you're probably going to have a lot of burning either way so if you want to use a different type of oil that's also okay.
Once the fat is hot and the bread is soaked carefully put the toast into the pan and fry for 3 to 5 minutes,
and just as he says you want to flip this
fairly consistently not just once like you would often modern French toast.
I think it's because of the oil that you're using, the butter and the lard, it burns really, really easily in fact
it goes from like not burned to burned within a matter of seconds I lost many a piece of burnt toast,
and even the good stuff turned out a little burned but while the toast fries or a
little bit before you can add the saffron to the rose water and let it diffuse for about 10 minutes
and hopefully it won't take me that long to tell you all about the history of French toast.
Concrete, aqueducts, French toast, these are ancient Rome's three most important contributions to history,
and the third is the one that had the real staying power because while the Coliseum crumble,
and the aqueducts collapsed bread soaked in egg or milk and then fried lived on.
Now after the fall of Rome it did kind of disappear for a while from the written record because they stopped
writing down recipes for 800 years but as soon as they began writing recipes again
French toast was there. It appears in pretty much every early Medieval cookbook from anywhere that there was once Roman Empire.
Around the year 1300 the collection of recipes known as 'Le Viander de Taillevent'
included instructions for preparing tostees dorees or golden toasts,
and it was from France so I guess that is actually the first French toast.
Similar recipes appear in early Medieval cookbooks from what's now Spain and Germany and England and of course Italy though
while they're similar the recipes do start to evolve the spices change and sometimes instead of milk or eggs they have
wine or other ingredients to soak them in and sometimes they just stop frying them so it becomes more like a soup
but many of the dishes that are similar to the very original do survive though under many, many different names.
In France for example it started out as tostees dorees and then payne peredew,
which today they still say pain perdu for French toast in France.
It means lost bread and probably refers to the stale bread that the dish is traditionally made of.
The same stale bread became a must for the Spanish torrijas the earliest mention of these appearing in a Christmas poem by Juan del Encina in 1496
but my favorite name for French toast and perhaps the most enigmatic of the names is poor knights.
Multiple countries in their respective languages call French toast poor knights,
like arme ritter in Germany and nobody really knows where the name came from
but it's definitely quite old because in the 19th century Deutsches Wörterbuch or German dictionary
it says that the earliest use of the phrase dates back to 1350 in the first German cookbook 'Das Buch von guter Speise' or 'The Book of Good Food'
and while the cookbook is very interesting the dictionary that mentions it is also really interesting because it was written by the Grimm Brothers,
like the fairy tale guys like Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel...
and the dictionary. Busy guys.
Now who these poor knights that lent their name to this Teutonic French toast were nobody really knows.
Some believe they were the Knights returning from the Crusades who came home to find themselves landless and
destitute and so with no money they were forced to take stale bread and dip it in egg and fry it just
like the other poor people doubtful I mean why why would that be the case I don't really know in
fact the entire idea that French toast started out of stale bread as a need to use up bread
because you couldn't afford to waste anything is kind of silly when most of the other early
ingredients are really expensive ingredients like saffron and sugar.
If you can afford those you can afford fresh bread and just because we don't know what the connection is it doesn't mean that there isn't one
And my favorite story about the poor knights is actually the English version of the story
where they have a version of French toast called Poor Knights of Windsor and it is tied to 26 very specific poor knights.
Following the Battle of Cressy in 1346 King Edward III created the Alms Knights of Saint George's Chapel.
These were a group of knights who with their private armies had gone to France to fight on behalf of the king
and there they were captured and ransomed back for exorbitant amounts of money
that forced them to sell all of their estates back in England.
These now poor knights supported the far more wealthy Knights that made up the most honorable and noble Order of the Garter,
and the Knights had a number of Duties including going to Saint George's Chapel each day
to pray on behalf of the Garter Knights and King Edward III.
In exchange they were given lodging in the lower ward of Windsor Castle.
A couple of centuries later King Henry VII reduced the number from 26 down to 13 and then in the 19th century they changed the name from Alms Knights
to the Military Knights of Windsor.
Though they have long been informally known as the Poor Knights of Windsor,
and to this day they are made up of retired army officers and are still housed at Windsor Castle, and their connection to French toast?
No idea, and nobody really ever makes any kind of connection but
there are a set of islands off the coast of New Zealand known as The Poor Knights.
They were named by Captain Cook who supposedly possibly thought that the islands looked like egg-soaked bread.
I don't really see the connection though,
and sadly there is no explanation regarding the name in 'The Compleat Cook' from 1658 which has the first English recipe for poor knights.
Though they are very similar to the Italian recipe that we're making today even including rose water.
So now here we are in 1658 and we have had many recipes for things that are like French toast
but none of them are actually called French toast for that though we don't have to wait very long because it was just two years later in 1660
that the first recipe for French toast appears.
"French toasts. Cut French bread, and toast it in pretty thick toasts on a clean gridiron,
and serve them steeped in claret, sac, or any wine with sugar and juice of orange."
The frying is totally gone and the eggs and milk have been replaced with wine and orange juice.
We are getting even further away from the original dish. Now don't even get me started on the 1914 recipe from May Byron's 'Pot-luck'
where her recipe for French toast is a loaf baked with bread crumbs meat and tomatoes.
That's meatloaf. That's not French toast, that is meatloaf.
There is no meat in French toast. There is no wine or orange juice in French toast.
I love you England but you've really lost the plot on this dish,
and I would say that it is up to us Americans to revive French toast
but it seems that we colonists couldn't keep our story straight with French toast either.
There's a tale that in Albany New York in 1724 an Innkeeper made this dish.
His name Joseph French so he named it
French's toast but forgot the apostrophe and the S and so it just went under the name French toast.
Kind of a silly story and almost well no it's definitely not true.
We like our European counterparts could not decide on a name for this dish.
There was German toast, and nun's toast, or cream toast some said panperdy. Still others pain perdu like the French
but probably in a horrible American accent like pain purdue,
but eventually the name that stuck was French toast,
though it was still quite a while before we could come to a consensus on what meal French toast belonged to.
The Hanford Sentinel said "When you are at your wits' end for a tempting luncheon dish,
try French toast which is a novelty in many homes."
And the Philadelphia Inquirer considered it an appetizing dessert but then in 1866 in
'Godey's' magazine edited by the Sarah Josepha Hale who brought us 'Mary had a little lamb' and the 'Holiday of Thanksgiving'
there is a recipe for French toast that is basically like the French toast that you'd get at Denny's today,
and it even says "If nicely prepared this is an excellent dish for breakfast... quite equal to waffles."
And that is typically how we in the States eat them today, as part of a well-balanced carb-laden nap inducing breakfast
smothered in maple syrup or powdered sugar or any other number of toppings.
Though I have to say I have yet to find a breakfast joint that serves French toast with saffron and rose water
like our medieval French toast that should be ready.
So once you've fried all of your toast strain the saffron from the rose water and then sprinkle it on top with plenty of sugar,
and here we are golden sippets from 15th century Italy.
I promise you they don't look as burnt in real life as they do on camera but they are
a little brown, golden like in the center and everything but
yeah really hard not to burn these. I tried many, many, many times.
Let's give it a go.
[Crunch]
Hm! Sweet.
Definitely doesn't taste like modern French toast and and that's perfectly okay it has
some of the same characteristics but that kind of rose water and saffron
lends it a very different flavor.
I would probably make them a little- either a little bit thinner or have more egg that kind of
can come in on the sides or leave them to soak longer. I don't know.
The center just is a little too dry which which sometimes happens with modern French toast as well but
because it's not like a brioche which is often used today for French toast because it is a heartier chewier bread
it really needs that time to get the egg in there and there's no milk so it just doesn't
permeate as easily but the flavor is absolutely wonderful.
Now with this Medieval French toast just as with modern French toast or any sugary breakfast food you gotta be careful
because in 1899 the Buffalo Morning Express warned us that
"Buttered toast, milk toast and french toast are exceedingly 'heavy' preparations which may be called
the positive, comparative and superlative degrees of indigestibility."
And I think you know exactly what they're talking about.
Now I am curious what everyone calls French toast. Here in the U.S we all call it French toast I think,
but it has a lot of names. I came across at least 50 so I'm curious what you call French toast,
and now a word from Squarespace our sponsor today.
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and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
Now I want to finish this and then go to Denny's or some other place,
and get some modern French toast.