Toast water

Toast water was a drink served to the weak and sickly in England, Australia and the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. It was made by pouring boiling water over toasted bread, allowing the liquid to cool, and then straining and serving the drink cold.

Until the development of the modern medical profession in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the task of administering medical care in Britain typically fell on women in the home. They were supported by cookbooks, which provided advice and purported cures. As the medical profession became more established and respected, cures were phased out of these cookbooks, and sections were added and specialty cookbooks produced instructing in "invalid cookery". Rather than cures, these sections contained foods that were considered appropriate.^[1] For the most frail and sickly patients, invalid cookery meant a liquid diet, with a primary goal of maintaining fluids.^[2] Toast water was one of the most common drinks recommended for these liquid diets, alongside beef tea (today prepared with meat extracts such as Oxo), and barley water.^[3]

Toast water became popular in the mid-19th century, as toast increasingly featured in British diets in the forms of croutons and stuffing, dishes like milk toast and cream toast, and accompanying soups and omelets.^[4] Burnt toast soaked in water had previously been served in Britain during the 18th century, though as a coffee substitute rather than as its own drink.^[5] Outside Britain, toast water was also prepared as part of invalid cookery in the United States and Australia.^{[6] [7]}

Toast water became increasingly obscure during the 20th century, and it is not included in modern cookbooks.^{[8] [9]} Roger Owen in the Oxford Companion to Food attributes this to liquid diets becoming rare as fewer people suffered prolonged, minor illnesses, and the widespread uptake of antibiotics.^[9] The food writer Helen Pollard suggests a different possibility: a drink made of bread, an ingredient available in almost all households could not be commercialised in the same way as barley water or beef tea, and therefore lacked the market forces that kept the other around.^[8]

Preparation started by toasting bread until dark, although in most advice, not burnt.^[10] Boiling water was then poured over the toast, and the mixture allowed to sit until cool. The liquid was then strained out, and the beverage served cold.^[10] By the 1830s, toast water could be prepared in a toast water jug, a specially designed jug with a lid and holes in the spout that would filter out the soaked toast. One piece made in the 1840s is attributed to Mintons.^[11]

Some recipe writers suggest additions, including redcurrant jelly, lemon, dried orange rind, or cream and sugar. Commenting on this last combination, Pollard called the addition a "distinct improvement".^[10] In one cookbook, published in the US in 1864, nutmeg and white wine were included. Drinkers would "relish" the drink, said the book's author, Mrs S. G. Knight—an important feature for a person who may not have much appetite.^[6] Alcohol was common in the invalid cookery of the US in the 1860s; besides making the drink more appealing, alcohol was understood to have warming and medicinal properties. In the context of a growing temperance movement, an alcoholic toast water may have been a ploy at drinking in a socially acceptable manner.^[6]

How far the bread should be toasted could bring strong feelings. Writing in 1849, the French chef Alexis Soyer defended unburned toast:^[12]

the idea that bread must be burnt black to make toast water is quite a popular delusion, for nothing nourishing could come from it: if your house was burnt to ashes, it would be valueless; and the same with burnt bread, which merely makes the water black, but the nutriment of the bread, intended to relieve the chest, has evaporated in smoke by being burnt.

By contrast, Dr and Mrs Delamere argued in their 1878 book Wholesome Fare that a cook should "allow some portion of [bread] to catch fire and, blaze, blow out the flame immediately". To them, the formation of charcoal was the point: they believed it could purify the water, and if one wanted to offer a beverage for its nutritional value, they should be serving oxtail soup.^[10]

• Toast dishes
• Bread dishes

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• Short description matches Wikidata