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| Seasons greetings from Caspar Milquetoast |
Mild and soothing, milk toast is a comfort food from way back.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a common breakfast dish. It’s a simple
recipe: toasted bread in warm milk, usually with sugar and/or butter added.
For a little more flavor, you could add salt, raisins, pepper, paprika,
cinnamon, cocoa, maple syrup, cumin, fruit… whatever you had lying around the
kitchen. Because it was considered such a mild, soothing dish, it was
often recommended to convalescents by doctors as a food that would avoid
upsetting their patients’ constitutions.
Milk toast is a recipe that Americans borrowed from Europe, where
varieties of this simple dish are found all over, probably introduced by
immigrants and tinkered with by cooks all over the country. It doesn’t
have to be bland, but it has long had that reputation.
Perhaps
because of that reputation, fairly or unfairly, this largely forgotten comfort
food made its way into the English language during the height of milk toast’s
popularity in America. In 1924, cartoonist H.T. Webster, who had been
drawing a daily panel strip for a dozen years already, introduced a character
who would be his most famous creation: Caspar Milquetoast. Webster’s
panel strip went by several different names. The name he used depended on
the subject of the day’s cartoon. Regular titles included Our Boyhood
Ambitions, Life’s Darkest Moments, How to Torture Your Wife, among others.
Cartoons where Caspar Milquetoast showed up were titled The Timid Soul.
And a timid soul Mr. Milquetoast was! He would balk at any
situation where he might have to express an opinion. It could be about
the day’s politics, where he was afraid to offend someone or—worse—have to
defend his own position, or it could be about what’s going on on the sports
page. (“Whadd’ya think of th’ Dodgers’ chances this year?” a tough chap
sitting next to Mr. Milquetoast once asked. “Uh, er, ah, I’d rather not
say, if you don’t mind,” he replied, fully in character). When the wind
blew his hat off his head and onto the grass next to a “Keep off the grass”
sign, he walked off, deciding it was about time he bought a new hat, anyway.
The name seems to play on the word milksop, which is a word that
had been used to describe meek, timid people for years before Caspar
Milquetoast was first introduced. Milksop is not very different from milk
toast; it’s basically the same recipe, except in milksop, the bread is not
toasted first. By 1930, milquetoast had made its way into English, with
strictly American origins, despite the French-seeming spelling of the word’s
first syllable.
Webster
died in 1952, and his assistant carried on with the strip until his own death
in 1953, but his wimp lives on in the English language today. You don’t
need to know where the word came from in order to use it correctly, but if
Caspar Milquetoast had his way, he might, um, well, prefer that you find out
and that you look up cartoons where he got his start and possibly enjoy them,
if you’re so inclined, if you want, but don’t feel you must; it’s all right if
you don’t…
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| Caspar Milquetoast decides he's had just about enough, already. |
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