If you’re a fan of US railways at all, or a New Yorker, you may be one of those for whom it’s hard to hear the words “Pennsylvania Railroad” and not think of one of the great train stations of the world, an astonishing building that once dominated Eighth Avenue from 31st to 33rd Street, and is now gone… only scraps and tatters of its former magnificence lingering here and there, buried underground. (And if you were a New Yorker in the early 1960s, you may remember the bitter comments on this loss by critics of the time: especially the one who—comparing the new Penn Station to the one it replaced—wrote, “[Once] one entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”) *
The railroad company too is now gone, long subsumed into the sorry chimera-creatures that became Conrail and Amtrak. Once upon a time the Pennsy bestrode the rail landscape of the US’s eastern seaboard like a colossus, having (often under seriously concerning circumstances) ingested nearly all its competitors. For a while in the early 1880s it was the single largest rail and transport company in the world. Yet the worm inevitably (and perhaps karmically) turned, and the Pennsy got ingested itself.
It took a while for the handwriting of what was to come to clearly appear on the wall in the post-WWII period, when—with the building of the Interstates and the takeoff of automobile ownership and traffic—the US passenger rail systems began to be inexorably driven toward bankruptcy. But even then the Pennsylvania still had some things worth being proud of: and one of them was its dining car service, which served the vital NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC corridor.
That line came with a lot of business travelers who had to be kept happy… and so its good food service lasted longer than that of many other routes. Their French Toast recipe is typical of the Pennsylvania’s dining service’s offerings during that period, and its somewhat elevated takes on old standbys. This approach to French toast is a little fiddly, but also a little special: the kind of thing you might like to make for family or friends when in a mood to display to someone that you think they’re worth it.
See the Recipe tab above for the details.
*And yes, the situation has somewhat improved since then. But a lot of us still can’t shake that memory of the long sad Scuttling Time…
You’ll need: electric mixer, mixing bowl, large skillet, paper towels
Heat oil for frying to hot
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
An unusual touch here is the inclusion of powdered sugar as an ingredient rather than a garnish. I suspect the chef(s) who devised the recipe were eager to avoid any grittiness in the final result, which makes perfect sense.
Please note that this makes enough French toast for four people. I made the full amount of egg-and-milk mixture even though I knew I wouldn’t be using it all today. We’ll see how it keeps in the fridge.
You’ll note also that the bread slices in my pics aren’t all of the same kind of bread. As I’ve got plenty of the Northern Pacific’s custom French toast bread on hand right now, I swapped in some slices of that to see how they’d work. (Briefly: extremely well.)
Spread one side of 4 slices of bread with butter. Spread one side of the other 4 slices of bread with preserves.
To make sandwiches, press well together a buttered slice of bread onto a slice spread with preserves.
Trim crust carefully…
…and cut each sandwich into four triangles.
In a mixer, beat eggs and sugar well together for at least 10 minutes.
(There are no pictures of that because I honestly didn’t imagine anyone’s all that eager to see them.). 😄
…Add salt, milk, and vanilla or cinnamon and beat well again.
(And the same for that. )
Lay small sandwiches in this mixture, carefully turning them over to soak well.
(It was surprising how foamy the egg-milk-and-sugar mixture came up after all the beating. It took the bubbles some minutes to go down.)
Here are the slices flipped over once…
(I gave them a second soak on one side to see how much of the egg and milk mixture they’d imbibe. They soaked up almost all of what I’d poured into the dish… about half of the whole amount.)
Drain on paper towels.
Fry in a very little hot oil.
(However much “A very little” might be. It’s so subjective! …Anyway, there’s about a quarter-inch depth of vegetable oil in the pan.)
Remove when of nice golden brown color…
…and drain.
(There’s no picture of that for some reason or other. Never mind.)
Dust with powdered sugar and serve hot with maple syrup.
(Sorry, there’s no maple syrup in these images, as it’d set off my IBS (dammit), and I intend to eat these.) 😀
They”ll be listed here, bear with us
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