AirFryday: Toad in the Hole with onion-mustard gravy

It’s not a toad of course, so you don’t need to go out and find a frog, then dig a hole in the ground, make a fire in it, cover the hot coals with earth, lay a toad on top, cover it and go away for three days. When you come back three days later, the toad will be dead and very hot. And the only toad, or frog, you might want to eat is the French favourite, frogs’ legs, which look and taste much like chicken wings when cooked.

There has never been an actual toad in the dish known as Toad in the Hole. In modern times, by which I mean the second half of the 20th century until now, the “toad” in its hot batter blanket has often been pork bangers or other sausages, which is what I used for this recipe. Yes, good old pork sausages again, this time wrapped up snugly.

Read more in Daily Maverick: I’m not telling porkies, these were perfect — and done in an air fryer

In much earlier times, there have been pigeons in the hole, rounds of beef, rump steak, lamb’s kidney, or any meat left over from a stew. The principle was always that it had to be a “poor man’s” cut, this being a dish that came out of the “peasant food” end of the cuisine scale. And this is not to mock this genre of cooking: some of the finest dishes, especially in France, came from this oeuvre.

Which proves a point that I believe in — that food does not have to be fancy to be fine. More often than not, in my experience, the food on the plates of rustic restaurants made by cooks who love their craft are often better than the finest cuisine in the poshest five-star restaurants. This is something that is not understood by those who dole out awards.

Dishes like toad in the hole appeared in print as early as 1762, says Wikipedia, “when it was described as a ‘vulgar’ name for a small piece of beef baked in a large pudding”. This being the British idea of a savoury “pudding”, often with a suet crust.

One of the earliest published references to Toad in the Hole (give or take) seems to be this from the Newcastle Chronicle in 1765: “No, you shall lay on the common side of the world; like a toad in a hole that is bak’d for the Devil’s dinner.” Which is obscure and hardly definitive; nor is context given. What it does tell us is that the term “toad in the hole” existed in 1765 and that at least one observer deemed it a bad, bad thing.

Less dire is this from Wikipedia: “The origin of the name is unclear, but it may refer to the way toads wait for their prey in their burrows, with their heads poking out, just as sausages peep through the batter. It may also derive from the ‘living entombed animal’ phenomenon of live frogs or toads supposedly being found encased in stone, which was a popular hoax /false belief of the late 18th century.”

In the later 20th century, circa 1950 until the 1980s, Toad in the Hole was still well known and cooked as a family dinner (or for “tea”) in Britain, but by 2017 it had clearly fallen out of favour to the extent of almost being forgotten, with a marketing survey that year finding that 23% of Britons had never eaten it.

But this is yet another thing about air fryers. Being so small and compact, and easy to operate once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s perfect for trying out all sorts of things, and it could just be that the ancient recipes will start to trickle back to our time, in new and fresh ways. And cooked in the alien beast on your kitchen countertop.

But you need to be brave and confident here because we’re not going to time everything. As I wrote a week ago, we need to understand that an air fryer is, in a sense, just another cooking vessel, like a frying pan or a skillet, and that when we use those things, cooking in them is not about timing but about shaking the pan when it needs to be shaken, stirring when needed, and so on. So be brave, and here we go…

Tony’s Toad in the Hole with onion-mustard gravy

Toad in the Hole, June 2024. (Photo: Tony Jackman)