What Is So French About A French Toast?

Names of dishes in India are sometimes very misleading. One such snack is the French Toast that most homes in India, prepare as a breakfast dish or a quick and tasty accompaniment to a cup of hot milky tea, when relatives come unannounced. This snack has had many variations in it’s cooking style. Some make it with sugar, cinnamon powder and milk. Some make it salty. I have memories of watching my mother deftly cut the bread slices into a triangular shape on the plastic board, that had scratches of the knife years on it. Exactly like the stale bread that was used to make French toast.

My memories of an Indian (French) Toast

I could assess that Ma was in the mood to indulge me today and do Paisa Vasool of not wasting the stale bread. 

I could hear the gentle tap on three eggs, to crack them open. Then she added milk, salt, chilli powder and began to beat the daylights out of the ingredients, till they got frothy in defeat. 

Then meticulously she dipped the slices into the hot oil, using a spatula, she fried them, till they turned a golden brown on both sides. 

Simultaneously on the other stove she would make a cup of tea, using Darjeeling tea leaves, milk, water and sugar. Then give it a boil, to bring it, to it’s perfect golden liquid that had the healing power to snap me out of my boredom and also bring down my seasonal cold. 

My mother wasn’t particularly happy to cook. I know she preferred to read, watch television and mind my business. But on some days, when she was happy, the aroma of the eggs, mixed with the bread was quite the happy scene at home. 

She served eggy breads with tomato ketchup and the sweet milky tea. It was a lovely mix of sugar and salt on my palette, that made me not savour both tastes in one gulp. I didn’t need to miss one sensation from the other. 

Ma ceremoniously pulled out the steel fork and put it on my plate so that I could cut my bread like the way a convent girl must eat. She used the spoon. 

Ma would watch me eat and then ask whether I liked the French toast? I remember asking her which region in France is this snack from? Nonchalantly she continued sipping her tea and replied it’s from France in Delhi. We both giggled and gobbled. 

When I became a mother, I too made French toasts for my school-going son, fortunately he ate it without too many questions. My sweet son, who credited me with good cooking, even if I was quite average.

Looking at the history of this recipe of French Toast also called Aliter Dulcia (translated as 'Another sweet dish') is included in the Apicius, a 1st-century CE Ancient Roman cuisine cookbook, not very different" from the modern French toast, although it does not involve eggs. Another French chef, Guillaume Taillevent had a recipe for tostées dorées involving eggs and sugar.

A 14th-century German recipe was named Arme Ritter 'poor knights'. A name also used in English and the Nordic languages. It doesn’t stop there, during the 15th century, there are English recipes for pain perdu and culinary expert Martino da Como also offers the same recipe.

In Spain, one of the first recipes of this was published in 1611 by Francisco Martínez Motiño. Interestingly the Austrian and Bavarian term is Pofesen because the shape of the dish is reminiscent of a medieval knight’s shield from the city of Pavia. Also in Hungary, it is commonly called bundáskenyér which is “fluffy bread”. In Ottoman cuisine, a dish of bread soaked in eggs with honey but no milk is called fāvniyye.

But I am not too sure if French people are aware that we have a snack named after their country. There is nothing terribly Parisian about this dish, but for me personally, it still evokes memories of my childhood with my mother from the winter months of our frugal Delhi kitchen, with the Eiffel Tower as an unattainable dream. 

Mohua Chinappa is an author, poet and runs two podcasts, The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. She is also a member of a London-based nonprofit award winning think tank called Bridge India.