French toast

French toast is a dish of sliced bread soaked in beaten eggs and often milk or cream, then pan fried. Alternative names and variants include eggy bread, Bombay toast, gypsy toast, and poor knights (of Windsor). When French toast is served as a sweet dish, sugar, vanilla, or cinnamon are also commonly added before pan-frying, and then it may be topped with sugar (often powdered sugar), butter, fruit, or syrup. When it is a savory dish, it is generally fried with a pinch of salt or pepper, and it can then be served with a sauce such as ketchup or mayonnaise. History and terminology A 14th-century German recipe uses the name Arme Ritter , a name also used in English and the Nordic languages. Also in the 14th-century, Taillevent presented a recipe for "tostées dorées". Italian 15th-century culinary expert Martino da Como offers a recipe. The usual French name is pain perdu ( , reflecting its use of stale or otherwise "lost" bread. It may also be called pain doré in Canada. There are fifteenth-century English recipes for pain perdu.