Some of the world's very best dishes started out with a piece of leftover bread. And in our campaign to Save the Leftover Bread, we've touched on a few, like brown bread ice cream and spaghetti with crispy breadcrumbs.

MFK Fisher called milk toast an "instinctive palliative" but gave an approximate recipe nonetheless in her Alphabet for Gourmets, and encouraged tinkering. Simply put, the reviving comfort dish is buttered bread with warm milk. In this Indian version, the milk is infused with aromatic brown spice and ever-so-slightly sweetened. The buttered bread is crisped in a pan. It can make a light meal for someone who needs to feel better about life, but it's also good as a quick dessert for two (in which case you could increase the sugar to two spoons).

Keep the two components separate until you're ready to tuck in, since as soon as the milk hits the bread, the bread begins its inexorable journey towards sogginess. And of course, tinker with the recipe as much or as little as you like. You can't really go wrong with milk toast.

INGREDIENTS