as everyone in Britain knows, is made by placing a slice of bread in front of dry heat—a fire, a grill, or an electric toaster—until the surface browns and gives off an attractive smell. The attractive taste, smell, and colour of toast come from the thermal decomposition of sugar and starch molecules on the surface of the bread.
The true toast addict is fussy about its preparation, choosing day-old baker's bread to make it, and insisting it is eaten as soon as ready, for good toast must be consumed whilst hot. It is the smell of toast, and the sensations of the hot crunchy outside of the bread combined with the soft inner crumb and melted butter, that make it so appealing. Left to go cold, it becomes leathery and loses its aroma.
Toast is a standard part of a proper English breakfast, and together with a cup of tea, it forms a popular snack at any time. Butter is the most common accompaniment; other toppings include marmalade or jam or honey, especially at breakfast time. Toast is often used, rather in the style of a medieval trencher, to provide an edible base for, say, poached eggs, sardines, baked beans, and other, mainly savoury, items (see also savouries).
Why toast should have become such an English speciality is not clear. Possibly English wheat bread, which kept for several days, had something to do with it. It certainly lends itself more to toasting than the close-textured rye breads, staple food in much of N. Europe. Elizabeth David (1977) says, ‘I wonder if our open fires and coal ranges were not more responsible than the high incidence of stale bread for the popularity of toast in all classes of English household’, and comments on the number of devices invented for holding bread in front of an open fire. These have now been replaced by the toaster, and the electric or gas grill.
Certainly, toast has a long history in Britain. ‘Tost’ was much used in the Middle Ages, being made in the ordinary way at an open fire. At this time sops—pieces of bread—were used to soak up liquid mixtures, and these were often first toasted, which reduced their tendency to disintegrate. Often toast was spread with toppings. ‘Pokerounce’ was toast with hot honey, spiced with ginger, cinnamon, and galangal. ‘Toste rialle’ was covered with a paste of sugar and rice flour moistened with sweet wine and including pieces of cooked quince, raisins, nuts, and spices, the whole thing covered with gilt sugar lozenges. A popular dish of the 17th century was cinnamon toast, which at that time was made by covering the toast with a paste of cinnamon and sugar moistened with wine. Early settlers in N. America retained their liking for it, and it became a traditional American dish.
Meat toppings for toast became fashionable during the 16th century. At first they were sweetened: for example veal toasts were made with chopped veal kidney and egg yolks, sugar, rosewater, cinnamon, and ginger. Various other ‘hashes’ based on finely chopped meat were served on toast. A trace of this practice survives in the serving of toast fingers with plain cooked minced meat, an adaptation made to the original dish in the 18th century.
The toast-and-something habit has a long precedent in England. Towards the end of the 16th century all kinds of things began to appear on toast, such as poached eggs (which had been previously served in broth); buttered (scrambled) eggs; ham or bacon; anchovies; and melted cheese. All of them have remained associated with toast. The last achieved existence as a separate dish known as Welsh rabbit (or rarebit) which it has maintained until this day. Toast with toppings became very popular as ‘savoury toast’, beloved of the Victorians and Edwardians. This, remarked ‘Wyvern’ (Kenney-Herbert, 1894a):
belongs wholly to English cookery … savoury toasts of an ordinary kind ought to be favourably regarded by all thrifty housekeepers, inasmuch as they afford an easy and pleasant way of working up fragments of good food that might otherwise be wasted.
Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, toast was often moistened in wine when making such dishes as toasted cheese, but at the end of the 17th century it became more usual to butter it. Hot buttered toast was eaten at breakfast. Later, when afternoon tea became the fashion, it appeared here too.
The 1890s saw the arrival of Melba toast. This is extraordinarily thin toast and a technique for producing it is often attributed to Escoffier and Ritz, who are supposed to have named it after Marie Ritz (who had been demanding thinner toast) but then renamed it after Melba at a time when her diet called for something of the sort. Elizabeth David (1977) found the story appealing but questionable.
Toast also has a slightly disreputable history as a basis for drinks. Amongst many coffee substitutes used in the 18th century, burnt toast soaked in water was the easiest to make. The result was not much like coffee; but then neither were any of the other drinks made from grains, roots, and herbs. However, towards the end of the century toast water (see below) was made as a drink in its own right.
For French toast, see pain perdu.
See also savouries.
Laura Mason has written about several aspects of British food in books including Sugar Plums and Sherbet (1998), Farmhouse Cookery (2005), and Traditional Foods of Britain (1999), which she co-authored with Catherine Brown.
