What does “pain perdu” actually mean in French?

Pain perdu literally means “lost bread” — not lost as in misplaced, but bread that would otherwise be wasted. The name captures a very French instinct: stale bread is too valuable to throw away, so day-old baguette gets soaked in egg and milk (here, coconut milk and maple syrup) and fried into what English calls French toast. The dish is older than France itself — Romans were soaking stale bread in milk and egg centuries before the French named it.

The English name has its own myth: a popular story credits a chef named “Joseph French,” supposedly misnamed “French toast” instead of “French’s toast” — a charming tale, but almost certainly false. The French name, by contrast, is purely practical, not patriotic. Perdu (“lost”) shows up across French “waste-not” cooking — using leftover bread, stale cake, or (as in this clip’s own follow-up) leftover coconut milk turned into a crêpe batter — a whole home-cooking habit built around not throwing food away.