Not only have I never heard of French toast being treated as a savory food, but when I first read “savory french toast” , I thought the poster was expecting French toast rolled around sausage , or with scallion cream cheese on it or maybe a Monte Cristo type sandwich ( which I guess is really a sandwich made with French toast.). Seeing the request for ketchup surprised me- but I would have given an 11 or 12 year old ketchup. Maybe not a five year old…
Take it to a further extreme, then–would you be even mildly put out if they took your meal and simply dumped it in the trash?
Again, I can’t speak for the original host here, but my immediate reaction would be that the guest is intentionally ruining the meal, not that they have odd tastes. And that while it’s always a possibility that a guest will not like a meal and I’ll have to toss it, I certainly don’t have to indulge in what seems like a tantrum, wasting ketchup at the same time.
It’s clear that this wasn’t the case here–but that would have been my immediate reaction. I might have given them the ketchup, anyway, if for no other reason than to keep the peace, or just find out what the deal is–but I’d certainly be thinking that initially.
I do think food used to be relatively a lit more expensive, which changed how people thought about things. And if ypu house is the house the kids all play in, it can get pretty ex0ensove to feed a crowd all the time even now.
Twenty years ago, our whole group hung out at one guy’s house. His mom had pretty strict rules about us not eating there. At the tine i thought she was a shameful cheapskate, but now as an adult I see that having half a dozen teenagers free grazing in your kitchen could be a finacial disaster.
I went to a Catholic elementary school, but transferred to the public (very good) high school. By the second year there, all my friends were Jewish (and the only close friend who was not Jewish – Presbyterian – was half-Jewish). I don’t remember any of these kinds of “rules” when I visited or was invited for a meal. But it was California, and I think there was a lot of conscious assimilation going on.
Yeah, this was the weird thing for me. Savoury French toast doesn’t sound half bad! Ketchup on French toast sounds disgusting to me. 
I don’t see that as remotely analogous.
That said, ketchup on French toast just doesn’t seem that odd to me. It’s eggs and bread. Why wouldn’t ketchup go well on that? (Other than I’m not a fan of ketchup. Hot sauce would go better for me, since I hate sweet breakfasts.) It’s quite a stretch – to me – to see that as “intentionally ruining” a dish.
That’s because you don’t view it as ruining the meal. But my immediate reaction is that it is.
To be clear, I’m not at all disputing that it probably works just fine. But in my four+ decades of existence, French toast has always been a sweet dish, to be served with syrup or powdered sugar. It wouldn’t faze me if someone asked for jam or honey or the like. But ketchup just completely violates my expectations for the meal, and my gut reaction is that it’s equivalent to trashing it. That I’d probably get used to it and possibly even like it is irrelevant to this point.
I was never a fan of French toast, though my brother was, but I always thought of it as a sweet dish, and sort of a cousin to pancakes.
This is post-slumber party breakfast for pre-teen boys. It was a quickie casual affair, not a meal that involved extensive planning. If I remember correctly, the only thing offered in addition to French toast was orange juice. So, not a gourmet meal.
Dinner the evening before was microwaved hotdogs. Only.
In India, French toast is white thin toasting bread dipped in beaten egg (with salt only) and pan fried. It is served with raw green chilis, chopped cilantro leaves, crispy fried onions, and ketchup (either regular or chili ketchup).
I get it, but I’m not sure that changes the logic. Ok, so one of the little brats isn’t hungry or doesn’t like French toast or whatever. He’s probably going to dump the entire bottle of ketchup on his plate and then say he doesn’t want it. I’m not going to waste more food by indulging in some tantrum.
That would have been an incorrect interpretation on the part of the host, but from my perspective understandable since French toast is literally always a sweet meal. In fact, it’s surprising to me that the recipe for the toast itself doesn’t include a sweetener, but I’d never have known as I’ve never made it myself.
At any rate, I’m glad to gain the perspective that there are interesting savory versions of the dish.
Mrs. Dowell had no reason to think that. Her son was my best friend and we were very polite, very studious, shy, nerdy, good kids. Indeed, Bobby was the one known as the super-picky eater. I was a kid she knew very well, a guest in her house at her invitation, and not someone who she would have reason to believe would play such games. Feeling like I had been slapped in the face, I quietly ate my dry (strangely sweet) French toast with big gulps of water. I didn’t hate it, but I couldn’t enjoy it either after that.
Once again, nothing my guest puts on their food and eats can be considered “ruining” a meal for me. Why would I think so? Throwing it in the garbage – sure. Wasting food. If you don’t want what I cook, that’s fine. No insult taken, just refuse it. I just thought of an example, and it involves ketchup. My cousin from Poland was visiting. I made some homemade pizza. Dough from scratch (cold risen for three or four days), good cheeses, quality meats, homemade tomato sauce, all of that. Before he even bit into it, he asked for ketchup. Now, to be honest, I did jump back a little. “You want ketchup … on your pizza?” “Yes.” Who the fuck am I to tell him how to eat his pizza? I got the ketchup. Apparently, pretty popular thing to do in Poland. So much so, that the Polish grocery around my house sells “pizza ketchup” from Poland.
Did he eat everything? Yes. Did he enjoy his meal? Yes. Did we have great company and time together? Absolutely. Of what use is it for me to get upset over the fact he put ketchup on my homemade pizza? If I took offense, it would have cast a pallor over the day and ruined it for both of us. Instead, I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t gatekeep his tastes. I let him have his pizza how he liked it, and I had mine how I liked it.
To be honest, that’s so different from what I know as French toast that I wouldn’t even call it French toast. The only common ingredients are bread and egg.
Well, ok. Mrs. Dowell probably should have been more thoughtful. Though my experience as a kid is that my opinions and beliefs were always completely disregarded anyway, so perhaps a child with a healthier relationship with the adults in their life would be more taken aback.
So there was a tiny reaction. Clearly, you consider it a positive to respond to your guest’s wishes, and I’d agree that’s a positive trait. But there was a small moment of overcoming your instinct.
Personally, I’d consider ketchup on pizza only mildly unusual. More tomato sauce for their tomato sauce. A 2/10 on whatever scale we’re using. Ketchup on French toast is a 9/10. It’s just so strange that it invites different theories about what’s going on. Heck, asking for maple syrup on their pizza is far less weird to me than ketchup on their French toast.
Yea, that of mild surprise, not feeling “put out” or insulted. I would react the same way if you asked me for a gin and cream soda cocktail.
Anyway, I think we may be running a bit far afield now.
I don’t know, a gin and cream soda sounds kind of intriguing. Thanks for the idea.
I did it as a freshman new student week. Would not repeat. (Only liquor and soda we were down to.)
Anyway, here is a Swedish person’s explanation. It’s almost as if different cultures have different customs.
“I grew up like this, and it was out of respect for the visiting child’s parents who may have planned dinner which would then get wasted. Also, sitting down to dinner as a family was an important part of the day, so you shouldn’t mess with another’s family’s meal time,” @Tyckmyckna recalled and added: “Your friend could absolutely have dinner (or any other meal) with your family, stay over etc - if it was planned and agreed beforehand.”
There was a similar explanation in the NYT article -
He said Swedish people also want to respect the independence of the family and offering another person’s child a meal could be seen as a critique of the other person’s ability to support a family.
I can understand the explanations I’ve seen for not offering food. You don’t want to insult the child’s parents , you don’t want the dinner the child’s parents prepared to go to waste, you shouldn’t mess with another family’s meal time, you only had a few months to harvest food for the whole year so there’s no tradition of spontaneous meals. I get all that and TBH , it isn’t at all strange to not want to unexpectedly feed your kids’ friends in the US. But in my experience (and at least a few other people’s) there’s also a sort of convention in the US that you go home when meal time approaches so that a kid who wasn’t invited to dinner wouldn’t still be in the house when the family was eating dinner. If I had been at a friend’s house after school and didn’t go home when the family was getting ready for dinner, I would have been violating a norm. And what none of the articles or threads I’ve seen explains is whether there is no such norm in Sweden or if there is such a norm and the kids sitting at the table without a plate or playing alone in the friend’s room have violated it. Larson even says on Twitter that some of the families that followed this custom would tell her "go home and eat you live 2 mins away”.