The World That Was - Roman French Toast by Apicius

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!

Today, we'll be making another Roman recipe, from Apicius - a writer and gourmet from the 1st century AD. This recipe is very similar to modern French toast, but is really only a little plainer than modern renditions of it! The original recipe is pretty short, and not very descriptive, so I've decided to reconstruct this in a slightly different way.

"Slice fine white bread, remove the crust, and break it into large pieces.  Soak these pieces in milk and beaten egg, fry in oil, and cover with honey before serving." - Apicius, 7.13.3

In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!

Ingredients

Bread loaf (or pre-sliced bread)

3 eggs

200ml / 1 cup milk

honey (to taste)

olive oil (to fry)

Method

1 - Bread

To begin with, we need some bread. You can of course use any kind of bread. I made some Roman bread last week, so check that out if you want to know how I made the loaf I used here!

In any case, slice your loaf of bread into slices, each one about as big as your finger. We don't want these too thin - because then they'll disintegrate in the egg dredge, but we don't want them too thick, or your toast won't cook correctly.

2 - Prepare the egg dredge

Now we need to make our egg dredge. Start by pouring your milk into a bowl or tub that's big enough for your slices of bread. Then, crack your eggs into the milk, and whisk it together until it's cohesive. Roman chefs may have used dove or wildfowl eggs, but chickens were also common in the kitchens of Rome, so I'm using chicken eggs for this. Depending on what kind of alternative you use, you may need to add more eggs than I have.

3 - Soak your bread

Next, place your slices of bread into the dredge, and leave them there for about 30 seconds. Don't leave them too long, we really only want the exterior to be coated in our egg mix. When one side has finished soaking, flip it over and coat the other side, again for about 30 seconds.

4 - Cook your Bread

Pour a few tablespoons of olive oil onto a frying pan, and let it heat up. When the oil starts to shimmer, place one or two of your slices into the pan and let them cook for about two minutes, or until you start to see the underside turn a deep golden brown. When that side is cooked, flip it over and let the other side cook for the same amount of time.

5 - Serve

Serve these hot, when fresh off the pan. Drizzle honey over the top of them before you serve them up! If you want to imagine you're an extraordinarily rich Roman, you can sprinkle some ground cinnamon over the tops of these before eating!

The finished toast is very rich and filling, and frying it in olive oil adds a very nice savoury flavour profile to it. While it's likely to have been eaten by at least somewhat affluent Romans, it doesn't seem to have been exclusively reserved for them - given how relatively simple this is to make, with fairly common ingredients. As you can imagine, it's quite decadent, so you shouldn't really have this daily.

Though it tastes so good that you might want to have it every morning!