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Soppy, a dish of seasoned onions stewed in a gallon of stale beer and a pint of oil. That does not sound appealing to me since I like my toast with a square of butter melting in to it, so just how did toast make the transition from the 1400s to a story on the front page of the food section in the New York Times?
During medieval times, bread was so important that it often made up part of the table setting. Bread was the plate. History tells us bread used in this way was called a trencher. A trencher was a slab of stale bread with food served on top. The bread soaked up the avors and nectars of the food and then the bread could be eaten, as well. Throughout the 1500s and most of the 1600s, toast was also eaten after it was used as a seasoning of sorts for spirits.
All of this changed with the invention of toasters and grills. Alan MacMasters, a Scotsman, invented the rst electric toaster in 1893. MacMasters’ invention, however, did not take hold with the public. His appliance was thought to be a re hazard as the iron wiring often melted. The other problem was fundamental. Electricity was sim- ply not common in households in the late 18th century.
It is thought that toast began as a method to preserve bread. Scorch- ing or even browning sliced bread helped it last for longer periods of time and thus, it could be stored.
Two inventors from Chicago, in 1905, created an alloy that was re resistant and this marked the trail for others to try their devices on toasting bread. Around this time many electric toast- ers were brought to market. These toasters, however, only toast- ed one side of bread at once, so the bread had to be ipped. An automatic toast-turner, was invented 1913 and this was followed by the semi-automatic toaster. This turned off the heat in the de- vice when the bread was cooked. Finally, in 1919, the pop-up toaster, similar to the small appliance on your kitchen counter, was created and today toast rightfully takes its place as a staple in America’s haute cuising.
White bread was once considered to be food of the upper class and royalty. Brown bread was for the poorer classes.
A popular idiom associated with the word “toast” is the ex- pression “to toast someone’s health”, which is often done by one person in a group or at a gathering. The toast is done by raising a glass in salute to the individual. This meaning is derived from the early meaning of toast, which from the 1400s to the 1600s meant warmed bread that was placed in a drink. By the 1700s, there were references to the drink in which toast was dunked being used in a gesture that in- dicates respect: “Ay, Madam, it has been your Life’s whole Pride of late to be the Common Toast of every Publick Table
Have you heard of the “buttered toast phenomenon?” The phenomenon was rst published in the form of a poem in the New York Magazine in 1835 and it hints to the fact that when toast slips out of your hand, it land butter- side down. This notion is based on buttered toast usually being held butter-side up. If dropped at an angle from a hand, given that the toast is likely to be between two and six feet o the ground, at the start of the fall, it only has time to do a half-turn, thus it seems to almost always (62% of the time) land butter-side down. The weight of the but- ter actually has little bearing on the outcome of the fall.
The world’s rst automatic bread slicer was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder in Davenport, Iowa in 1912, but was not used in bakeries until 1927.
Electric toasters are in approximately 88% of American homes, today
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