15^th century

Pain Pur-dew

Pain pur-dew (pain perdu), or ‘lost bread’, is also known as ‘eggy bread’ in Britain. Its French name has led many to assume it is a French dish; it is, in fact, a dish that appears simultaneously in many European cookery books in medieval times.

In the fourteenth century a recipe ‘pour faire tostees dorees’ (to make golden toast) appears in the French book Le Viandier de Taillevent. Around 1450 a virtually identical recipe appears in the Italian Libro de Arte Coquinaria (by Martino de Rossi), adding rosewater and saffron to the mixture. The earliest recipe I could find for pain pur-dew in an English manuscript dates from around 1420 and can be found in Thomas Austin’s collection ( Two Fifteenth-century Cookery-books, 1964): it is identical in mode of preparation but, like the French version, omits the rosewater and saffron. This is not to say these flavourings weren’t added. They might just have been in such common usage that they were not mentioned in the instructions.

Payn pur-dew. – Take fayre jolkys of Eyroun, & trye hem fro þe whyte, & draw hem þorw a straynoure, & take Salt and caste þer-to; þan take fayre brede, & kytte it as troundej rounde; þan take fayre Boter þat is claryfiyd, or ellys fayre Freysshe grece, & putte it on a potte, & make it hote; þan take & wete wyl þin troundej in þe jolkys, & putte hem in þe panne, an so frye hem vppe; but ware of cleuyng to the panne; & whan it is fryid, ley hem on a dysshe, & ley Sugre y-nowe þer-on, & þanne serue it forht.

Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-century Cookery-books

For the earliest recipe known to man, we have to go back to around the fourth century CE. In the Roman cookery book Apicius: De Re Coquinaria we find a recipe that is simply named ‘another sweet dish’. The only difference is that the bread is soaked in milk and fried in olive oil. Eggs aren’t mentioned, but scholars know that often in Apicius, as in other manuscripts, recipes weren’t complete because things were left out that were common knowledge or because they were badly copied from earlier texts.

Serves 2

four 1 cm (³/₈ inch) thick slices of day-old white bread or brioche, not stale

50 g (1¾ oz) clarified butter

4 egg yolks, beaten

1 teaspoon rosewater (optional)

sugar or honey, to serve

Remove the crusts from the bread if you like, although I prefer to leave them on. Heat a frying pan that is large enough to hold the pieces of bread over medium heat.

Use a pastry brush to brush the bread all over with the clarified butter, then put it in the pan and fry on both sides until golden.

Put the beaten egg yolks into a deep plate and add rosewater if you want to use it. Dip the fried bread in the egg so that it is nicely coated. Return the bread to the pan and fry until the egg is cooked.

Serve with sugar strewn over it, or with a drizzle of honey as the Romans would have done.

You can use whole eggs, which I tend to do. Otherwise I end up with containers and freezer bags full of egg whites I forget to use. Simply use 2 large eggs instead of 4 egg yolks.