It comes in both sweet and savory; it’s breakfast toast, but it’s not toast; it’s French toast. Enjoyed today as a classic breakfast item, French Toast has a surprisingly lengthy history, with its roots stemming from ancient Rome. Having emerged as a means of minimizing food waste, its current popularity is a startling contrast to its applications in the past.
The first version of French toast is thought to have been recorded in the Roman cookbook “Apicius,” also known as “De re Culinaria” or “Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome.” Considered to be the oldest cookbook in the world, it was written by the wealthy Roman epicure Apicius. However, it is unclear as to how many of the book’s recipes can be directly attributed to him. One of the cookbook’s recipes instructs the reader to soak bread in milk, fry it with an egg, and serve it with honey. With Rome’s considerable influence, the dish later went on to spread to the rest of Europe.
Though the recipe had not been named in the cookbook, the simplicity of the dish allowed it to spread easily throughout different regions. Countries would develop variations; overall, however, the recipe would remain consistent. The French would call it “Roman bread.”
In Germany, it was called “arme ritter,” meaning “poor knight.” It was designed for impoverished soldiers who struggled to obtain protein, which the eggs in the recipe remedied. The Hundred Years’ War also played a role in the dissemination of French toast. Though the English had won against the French, the war had ended on French land, and when the English attempted to return to their homeland, the French demanded a ransom. English knights were forced to sell their assets in England to acquire the necessary money; thus, they became known as the Poor Knights of Windsor—it would become one of the many names French toast was known as.
As these knights then needed a cheaper source of sustenance, they, like the German soldiers, turned to French toast. Known as “pain perdu” in both France and England, the dish conserved money by recycling leftover bread. Stale bread was often hard and unpleasant to eat; however, dipping it into milk and egg softened it, forming a much more appetizing dish. Later, when the British colonized India, startling disparate variations known as “hurry curry” and “bombay pudding” were developed.
There are two potential theories on how French toast came to be known as it is. Some believe that prior to World War I, the dish was known as German toast; however, due to the political complications that arose after the war, the name was transposed to French toast. The second theory is that an innkeeper by the name of Joseph French had intended to introduce the dish as “French’s toast” in 1724 but had mistakenly forgotten the apostrophe, instead giving it the name we know it by today.
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