Tag Archives: breakfast

Culinary History, Global Exchange, Summer 2026

Grandma’s Savory French Toast

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By Sarita Bhagwat, Chef and Owner of Saffron and Savoir

This is not a story about a French recipe; it is not a story that takes place even remotely near France.  This is a story of an Indian grandmother who passed away 40 years ago, but whose culinary genius and creativity continues to live in our kitchen in Boston, Massachusetts, passed through from her daughter (my mother) to me, to my boys and to my (not so Indian) daughter-in-law!

Savory French Toast.

My grandmother (aji as we called her) passed away when I was 15. But she was the one who first got me interested in cooking, and the idea of delivering love through food. She was tiny, barely five feet, fair skinned, slightly plump, but neat. She always wore ironed, tightly wrapped sarees, showing just a bit of milky white belly underneath the colorful sarees. Aji was an elementary school teacher, but her real passion was cooking. In her tiny kitchen in a Mumbai suburb, she produced delicious dishes that were often ahead of their time.While I fondly remember her curries, it is her innovations like stuffed crabs that continue to motivate me to experiment with food. My grandmother was a firm believer in the healing power of foods.Her spicy fish broth was a cure for nasty summer colds, and most memorable to me, her dried Bombay Duck (a delicate fish found in the waters off Mumbai) rubbed on the eye lid was a cure for pink eye. Food was central to my summer holidays with my maternal grandparents, weaving itself into the fabric of fun, adventure, care and healing.

There are many dishes from my grandmother’s playbook I recreate, but the one that is most popular in my American household is her Savory French Toast. It was a staple at breakfast during my summer holidays, and in my school lunch box. In fact, it is one of the most requested breakfast dishes when my now grown-up boys and daughter-in-law come for a visit to Boston. My kids never met my grandmother, but my mother made this for my kids when she was on babysitting duties. So much did the boys associate this dish with my mother (who herself passed away last year), that they and Katy the daughter-in-law call it “Vidyut’s French Toast”

Now more about this strange delicacy. French toast evokes images of weekend breakfasts, smells of cinnamon, vanilla and berries and brioche soaked in syrup for most. But not for our family.  The idea that French Toast is sweet, and to be eaten with maple syrup is something I learned only after moving to the US as a 20-year-old student in the 1990s. 

Maggi Hot & Sweet Sauce is easily available on amazon and in Asian stores

The French Toast I grew up with, was savory, spicy, cheesy and salty. White bread slices soaked in a batter of eggs, milk, a combination of cheeses, and yes, a spicy green chili and herbaceous cilantro. And no syrup in sight either, we always ate ours with Maggi Sweet and Hot Sauce.* 

I felt as though we had come full circle when, on my recent visit to Washington DC, Ishan and Katy asked me to make Grandma’s French Toast and Katy, with a big grin, took a bottle of Maggi Hot & Sweet Sauce out of her shelf as soon as we sat down to eat!

When you grow up eating certain foods, you don’t think about how unique and special those dishes might seem to an outsider. I realized this when I madeFrench Toast as a chef, while cooking on a remote island in Maine. It was a cold foggy morning, ten women writers were to arrive for a week-long retreat that afternoon. I needed to make a quick brunch for myself and the organizers. I whipped up a stack of “Vidyut’s French Toast” and decided I would take a chance on these folks liking them. And oh boy, did they like them!! They devoured the entire stack, moist and cheesy with parmesan, and spicy with a kick from chopped up green chili. My friend Cintra who was assisting me on this gig accused me of holding out on her for not having cooked these in our 20-year friendship.

Grandma’s Savory French Toast Recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 12 slices white bread (white sliced bread is essential)
  • 8 eggs
  • ½ cup whole milk
  • 1 cup grated cheese (any combination of parmesan and gruyere or cheddar)
  • 2 chopped green chilies
  • ¼ cup chopped cilantro
  • Salt, pepper to taste
  • Olive oil or butter

Method

Cut each slice of bread into half, forming triangles or rectangles. Whisk eggs and milk. Add salt, pepper, chilies, cilantro and cheese to eggs and mix well. Pour into a rectangular 9×12 shallow baking dish or pan.

Heat a flat 10-inch frying pan. Add a tablespoon of olive oil or butter or both.

Dip four pieces of bread briefly in the egg mixture so they have a coating on both sides. Make sure each piece has some grated cheese from the mix – it can sometimes sink to the bottom of the pan.

Once oil is heated, put soaked bread pieces on the pan and cook on one side for 2 minutes on medium heat, flip and cook the other side for another 2 minutes or till the edges are brown and egg coating looks golden and crispy. Repeat with the remainder of the bread and egg mixture. Add more oil or butter for each round of frying.

Serve hot with your favorite sauce

Notes:

This recipe is best served immediately but can be made an hour ahead and warmed in the oven or on the frying pan. Using a shallow pan for soaking the bread is essential, otherwise the grated cheese will sink to the bottom of the pan, and you will have an excess amount of cheese on your last pieces of toast.

 

 

Early Modern, Experimentation, Food and Drink, Series: Beer, Series: Germanic Studies

Beer soup: The Breakfast of Early Modern Rulers

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By Molly Taylor-Poleskey

As a young ruler, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, the Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia began each morning with a beer soup. He then dutifully locked himself away and attended to the day’s business until the midday meal.

This simple anecdote is recounted by almost every biographer of Friedrich Wilhelm. I was intrigued by the historiographic implications of this (what did biographers think it reflected about the ruler that he consumed this rather modest fare?). Beyond this, though, I became curious: what actually was beer soup? And, what it might have been like to start every day with it?

Engraving from title page of 1604 edition of Marx Rumpolt cookbook. Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id313700877
Engraving from title page of 1604 edition of Marx Rumpolt cookbook. Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id313700877

Although foreign to contemporary German cuisine, beer soup was very common in central Europe in the medieval and early modern period. As such common fare, it had a wide number of permutations. The most basic definition of beer soup is a “soup of brown (probably dark) beer, cream, fat and flour or egg yolk.”[1]  Various other recipes called for slightly different ingredients (such as costly spices), or onions and cheese to make a more substantial soup to accompany a roast.

After reading about various beer soups in early modern cookbooks, though, I still could not wrap my head around what a beer soup was. So, there was only one thing to do: perform “experiential research” and try beer soup for myself.

The Experiment

Somewhat surprisingly, my friends Steve and Noria enthusiastically agreed to join the experience. We gathered at my apartment one Saturday afternoon (we couldn’t bring ourselves to perform the experiment first thing in the morning) and decided to attempt two versions of the recipe. We selected the recipes for their clarity and because they used a representative mix of commonly-mentioned ingredients.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOur first recipe was inspired by a recipe in an eighteenth-century encyclopedia for “a really good beer soup.”[2] We translated it thus:

  • 1 Bottle of dark beer
  • Sweet cream
  • Three egg yolks[3]
  • Mace
  • 3 ½ Tbs. Butter[4]
  • Raisins[5]

Thoroughly stir mixture, boil it and serve with toast.

“a really good beer soup”
“a really good beer soup”

The result? “Repulsive,” said Steve, “I don’t want to eat it anymore.” I had to agree, the egg-drop soup consistency combined with the taste of day-old beer was nauseating. Noria had a more descriptive response: “it’s weird that it tastes sweet; I would have never guessed it since it smells like feet.” The toast was unquestionably the highlight of that attempt.

Modern taster, Noria, thinks otherwise
Modern taster, Noria, thinks otherwise

The second attempt was, thankfully, slightly more palatable. For this, we used the following recipe from the 1604 edition of Marx Rumpolt’s cookbook:

  • 1 Bottle of white beer (we used Erdinger Weißbier)
  • Cloves
  • 3 ½ Tbs. butter
  • 2 slices of rye bread cut into small chunks
  • Salt to taste

Combine beer, cloves and butter. Heat in a pot, but don’t let it boil. When it’s ready, add bread and salt and this makes a tasty soup. [6]

Although this attempt was not completely successful, we all agreed that it was much better than the first. Perhaps with fewer cloves and less salt, it was conceivable that someone (other than us) might enjoy this soup.

Reflection

Title page of 1604 edition of Marx Rumpolt cookbook. Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id313700877.
Title page of 1604 edition of Marx Rumpolt cookbook. Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id313700877.

In following these recipes, I did not presume to recreate the experience of an early modern diner. The gulf between our palates, ingredients, cooking tools and methods is just too wide. But there’s no doubt that the exercise helped me realize some things about the habits and tastes of the people I study. For example, beer soup was more a hearty drink than a soup that might constitute a meal. This fits with the description of daily habits from an early eighteenth-century court advice manual, which described beer and bread for Früh=Trunk, or “early drink” (instead of using the word for breakfast, Frühstück). The records of daily food distribution at the Berlin residence also only refer to two meals: the midday and evening meals. The elector’s beer soup, then, was more likely meant as a restorative broth. Other absolutist rulers, such as King Charles II of England, are known to have drunk such a restorative during their morning levée when they were ceremoniously washed and dressed.

The practical application of the recipes made me pay much closer attention to the details of the instructions than if had I just read them. I could not follow the author’s instructions to the letter. In the end, I had to make decisions about what modern ingredients to substitute for early modern ones, such as whipping cream with sugar for sweet cream. Most likely, my Calphalon pot over an electric burner also produced different results than an iron kettle or a raised hearth.

But, even Rumpolt allowed some room for improvisation: “each cook prepares food as he pleases … in my opinion, there are no absolute rules in cooking, otherwise it would be impossible.”[7]

[1] Sabine Bunsmann-Hopf, Zur Sprache in Kochbüchern des späten mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit-ein fachkundliches Wörterbuch. (Würzburg: Verlag Koenigshausen & Neumann GmbH, 2003), 29.

[2] Johann Georg Krünitz, “Bier=suppe.” Oekonomischen Encyklopädie Oder Allgemeines System Der Staats- Stadt- Haus- Und Landwirthschaft, 1773, http://kruenitz1.uni-trier.de/.

[3] Presumably the egg whites would have been turned to more elegant purposes elsewhere in the early modern kitchen.

[4] Measurement taken from a beer soup recipe at the website: www.how-to-live-like-a-German.com

[5] We only had dried cranberries on hand—a New World food that only entered German cuisine in the 21st century!

[6] Nimb weiß Bier/ thu Kümmel und Butter darein/ laß nur damit warm werden/ und nicht affusieden/ und wenn du es wilt anrichten/ so schneidt Ruckenbrot darunten/ unnd salz es/ so is ein wolgeschmackte Biersuppen. Rumpolt, Marx, Ein new Kochbuch (Franckfurt am Mayn: Fischer, 1604), 164.

[7] “ein jeder Koch seine art und weise/ eine Speise seines gefallens zubereiten … Ist auch meine meynung ganz und gar nicht/ gewisse Regeln un Praecepta/ nach welchen sich einer/ der kochen wil lernen/ eben richten solte un müßte/ als wer es sonst unmüglich kochen …” Rumpolt, Marx, Ein new Kochbuch, 63.