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One hundred years ago this week, The Oregonian’s domestic scientist Lilian Tingle received a letter from Mrs. H. C. Johnstone, requesting a recipe for cinnamon toast. You might be thinking, what a silly question — wouldn’t any married woman of yesteryear know how to at least make toast?
Tingle (the GOAT, truly), answered the question without a whiff of condescension, offering several options ranging from creaming butter with cinnamon and sugar to simply sprinkling a cinnamon-sugar mixture over buttered toast like you probably learned how to do in kindergarten.
But making toast wasn’t always child’s play. Victorian-era cookbooks devoted entire pages to the preparation of toast, and it was still a long four months before the Toastmaster 1A1 Electric Toaster would enter American kitchens (and sliced bread was still a few years away). But in July of 1926, home cooks were finally free from the tenterhooks of watching and turning bread as it slowly got brown and crunchy. It was the world’s first electric automatic pop-up toaster, browning both sides simultaneously and ejecting the toast when it’s precisely how you want it. It even had adjustable darkness settings. The humiliation of scraping burnt crumbs into the sink was finally over.
And honestly, this couldn’t have come at a more crucial time. Before toasters became the most commonly owned small appliance in American households, most middle class households employed at least one domestic worker, but that was before the “servant problem” hit the country. Working women could now get higher wages performing more dignified labor.
Early 20th-century women suddenly struggled to get everything done alone, especially first thing in the morning — and the greatest test of a housewife’s mettle was the toast. But now, triumphantly, even children could be left to the task. Thanks, technology!
It may be that no one really needs a recipe for toast in these modern, electric times, but it’s always nice to have something sweet and buttery to smear across a warm, crusty slab. This one is adapted from Lilian Tingle’s 1926 recipe. Makes a half-pint
Ingredients
8 tablespoons (½ cup or 1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon honey
A generous pinch of flaky sea salt
Instructions
- Beat all the ingredients together until smooth and creamy. Serve on hot toast with another drizzle of honey and pinch of salt.