Category Food

What is the history of French toast?

Origin

One of the earliest versions of the French toast can be traced back to 5th Century A.D. Roman Empire. The first-known mention of a French toast-like dish was mentioned in “Apicius”, a 1st century AD collection of Roman recopies. The Romans dipped bread pieces in a milk-based mixture, before frying it in oil and butter.

Similar toasts were prepared in Europe and known by different names during the medieval period. For instance, suppe dorate in England, arme ritter in Germany and fattiga riddance in Sweden. Most of these toasts used a batter comprising milk and eggs, to make stale loaves of bread more palatable. In France, a toast made with bread, milk and eggs, known as tostees dorees, was mentioned in “Le Viandier de Taillevent”, a French recipe collection originally written around the year 1300.

In the 15th Century, a toast known as pain perdu rose n popularity in France. Pain perdu is seen as the modern variant of French toast prepared today. In fact, pain perdu is how French toast is referred to in France. By the 16th and 17th centuries, pain perdu began to be prepared in Britain and a few other European cities. As the dish spread to regions outside France, it came to be popularly called French toast. According to reports, 1660 is the year the word “French toast” first made an appearance in the Oxford dictionary. Within the next few years, the toast’s recipe spread across the British colonies.

Evolution

As the toast began to be prepared in several regions across the globe, they also came to be known by different names such as Spanish toast, German toast, nun’s toast, eggy bread, torriga and poor knights of Windsor, among others.

As the French toast became a global hit, most places adapted the pain perdu recipe according to their taste preferences. For instance, Bombay toast has a sweet and savoury variants, where the sweet is prepared using bread slices, eggs, milk and sugar or honey and the savoury consists of bread, milk, eggs, ginger, garlic, onion, salt and coriander leaves.

Unlike the Europeans toasts that are served with cream and chopped fruits, in the U.S., the toast is topped with powdered sugar, maple syrup and butter.

In Scotland, the toasts are eaten as a sandwich with a filling made of sausages. In Italy, they are served with cheese and ketchup. In Hong Kong, the batter includes peanut butter or fruit jam along with eggs and milk. Australians eat the toasts with fried bacon.

Wide varieties

There are several unique varieties such as waffle, peanut butter and jelly-stuffed, smores, cereal-coated, red velvet, cheesecake, cinnamon roll, hot chocolate, corn flakes, basil and cherry tomato, muffin, rosemary and cheese casserole French toast prepared today.

French toast has become such a popular breakfast within the U.S. that each year on November 28 is celebrated as National French Toast Day.

 

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What is the history of plum cake?

Though cookies, hot chocolate, eggnog and gingerbread are iconic Christmas treats, the festive season would be incomplete without indulging in some rich plum pudding or cake.

Origin and evolution

Fruit cakes date back to Roman times, where the people prepared a dessert called satura, which comprised barley, dried raisins, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds and mead (wine made with honey). According to reports, the English began making a different version of satura during the Victorian period. This became a popular and an integral part of holiday feasts. They came to be known as plum cakes or plum puddings in England. Some food experts suggest that a version of plum cake has been consumed in England since the medieval period. During this period, there was a popular tradition of observing a period of fast before Christmas. Right before indulging in heavy treats and meals during Christmas, most people consumed a rich porridge that “prepared the stomach for feasting”. This porridge was made of oats, dried fruits, spices, honey and meat. Ingredients such as oats and meat were excluded from the recipe eventually. New ingredients such as flour, eggs and butter replaced meat and oats, paving way for the birth of the famous plum cakes, which are also known as plum puddings or fruit cakes.

Journey across the globe

Plum cakes moved out of England primarily due to colonization. English men working in colonies such as Australia, and the Americas, Canada and India received Christmas gifts and hampers from their families in England. Plum cakes were sent along with these hampers. The locals eventually began making these cakes in their households during the holiday season.

Do plum cakes really contain plum?

Plum cakes and puddings do not contain plum in them, though the name suggests the same. In medieval England, dried fruits such as raisins were generally referred to as plums. This is believed to have given rise to the term “plum cakes”, as dried fruits are an integral part of this dessert.

Plum cakes for all

Plum cakes are prepared and served in different ways across the world. In most western countries, plum puddings and cakes are baked in semi-spherical moulds and are gently set on flame with a spirit while being served. In India, boiled plum cakes are made in households that do not own an oven. In this case, the batter is bound in a muslin cloth before being boiled. These cakes are more dense and fudgy than the baked cakes.

One of the most famous Indian varieties is the Kerala plum cake.

Plum cakes can also be prepared according to one’s dietary requirements such as keto, gluten-free, vegan or dairy-free. There are a wide range of plum cake flavours, including spiced, pumpkin, orange, toffee and ginger.

 

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How food is preserved?

Chilling food in your refrigerator slows down the two main causes of decay – the growth of mould and bacteria, and chemical breakdown, as in the over-ripening of fruit.

In a domestic refrigerator the temperature is kept between about 34 and 41°F  (1 and 5°C). This is low enough to keep most of the food we use fresh for up to a week. Growth of decay causing organisms is slowed down but low temperatures do not destroy the organisms. Similarly, chemical breakdown is also slowed but not stopped completely so the food will spoil if kept for too long.

The temperature in a home freezer is normally about 0°F (-18°C), which will preserve food for anything from a month to a year, depending on the quality and type of food frozen.

 

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How microwaves cook without heating the plate?

Switch on the microwave oven, and you are switching on a powerful magnetic field which oscillates in the same frequency band that is used for radio broadcasts and radar. Microwaves in the field can be used to cook food rapidly by making the water molecules in the food vibrate at almost 2500 million times a second. This action absorbs energy from the magnetic field and heats the food.

As all the energy is absorbed by the food and not wasted on heating the surrounding air on the oven itself, the process is far quicker and more economical than traditional cooking methods.

The microwave energy does not heat the utensils in the oven because the materials they are made of such as China and glass do not absorb energy from the magnetic field. However, the plates do not come out of the oven cold, because they are heated by the food.

Special cookware

Many other materials besides China and glass can be used in a microwave oven – such as plastic, paper and cardboard. And special cookware – which is transparent to microwaves – has been developed for use in microwave ovens.

Metal container should not be used because metal does not transmit microwaves but reflects them. So foods should not be covered with aluminium file. Wooden utensils are also best avoided in microwave ovens because wood always contains some moisture, and this can cause it to split when it heats up.

 Long wave radio waves have a wavelength measured in thousands of metres. The microwaves used in microwave ovens have a wavelength of about 5in (120 mm).

An electromagnetic wave is a vibration of electrical and magnetic fields, constantly going from negative to positive. Microwave oven is operate with the waves that vibrate 2450 million times a second- a frequency of 2450 megahertz MHZ.

Water molecules have a positively charged end and negatively charged end. The vibrating positive negative microwaves interact with the positive negative water molecules, attracting and repelling them and making them twist first one way, then the other. This also happens 2450 million times a second.

The most important part of the microwave oven is the electronic tube, or magnetron, that generates the microwaves. The magnetron was developed in 1940 by British researchers at Birmingham University, and was first applied usefully in radar. It’s domestic potential was first realised buy the Raytheon Company in the United States in the early 1950s.

 

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Why they put the sea weed in ice cream?

As long as 5000 years ago, seaweed was used as a food and medicine in China. And today it is still eaten around the world. It is found in the Japanese fish and rice dishes sushi, in Welsh laver bread (seaweed fried with oatmeal) – and in ice cream.

Seaweeds provide ingredients called alginates and carrageenans, which are used in ice cream as stabilisers, so that ice cream does not become grainy in the freezer.

When ice cream is made, most of the water content freezes into very small ice crystals about 50 microns in size. (A micron is 1000th of a millimetre). As the thermostat of a deep freezer switches the refrigeration off and on, the temperature in the freezer fluctuates. Water melts off the crystals as the temperature rises, causing smaller ones to disappear. Then as the temperature drops again, the water freezes on to the remaining crystals, which grow in size. This causes the texture to coarsen.

Stabiliser slow the growth of the ice crystals, by forming protective layer around them, so the ice cream retains its smooth texture longer.

Carrageenan is obtained from red seaweeds found around rocky shores in northern Europe and North America. The seaweed is harvested, then dried to preserve it. Carrageenan can be extracted by immersing the dried seaweed in hot water. The extract is purified and then ground to a fine, cream-coloured powder. Alginates are exhorted in a similar way from brown seaweed in several parts of the world.

Before being used in ice cream, the alginate or carrageenan is usually blended with other compounds such as guar gum (extracted from the seed of the guar plant of India and Pakistan) and Locust bean gum (from the seeds of the Locust bean or carob tree, which grows in the Mediterranean area) to provide mixtures which are more effective than a single stabiliser.

Stabilisers are used in ice cream at about 0.2% of weight, so that a litre of ice cream contains less than a gram of the seaweed extract.

 

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How blue cheese is made with mould spores and needles?

Blue cheeses are the result of moulds that produced blue pigments. Originally cheeses must have been accidentally contaminated by natural moulds floating in the air as spores. Once the mould had grown, it would colonise cheese cellars or storage caves and subsequent cheeses stored there would also be contaminated.

Modern blue cheese production minimises the chances of the mould failing to grow. A suspension of the mould spores is either added to milk at the same time as starter bacteria or is sprayed over or injected into curd pieces which have been drained of the liquid component of milk, whey.

The mould used to make blue cheese is called Penicillium roquefortii, named after Roquefort in France.

The cheese has to be porous since the mould needs oxygen and space to grow, so pressing – the compression of curd in the mould, used for some other types of cheese – is avoided.

The cheeses drain slowly and are relatively soft. They have to be turned each day or they lose shape.

The temperature and humidity vary according to the type of cheese and its age. Typical conditions at between 41 to 59ºF (5 to 15°C) with humidity of 90-95%. Too high humidity encourages excessive growths of yeast and bacteria; to low causes the cheese to crack.

As the cheese matures, the supply of oxygen to the mould growing in the pores can be increased by piercing the cheese with stainless steel needles. For Stilton cheese, 4-48 holes maybe made at each piercing. The former use of copper needles led to the popular misconception that the blue colouring was caused by copper wires oxidising in the cheese. As the mould grows it not only produces the blue colour, but also enzymes. These break down the fats and proteins, producing the characteristic flavour, and making that cheese softer.

 

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