Cassoulet only beans, tomato sauce, sausages, and bacon. More expensive versions are likely to be cooked with goose fat and to include Toulouse sausages, lamb, goose, or duck confit. Haute cuisine versions require mixing pre-cooked roasted meats with beans that have been simmered separately with aromatic vegetables, but this runs counter to cassoulet's peasant origins. In the process of preparing the dish it is traditional to deglaze the pot from the previous cassoulet in order to give a base for the next one. This has led to stories, such as the one given by Elizabeth David, citing Anatole France, of a
Toad in the hole described the dish as a "batter-pudding with a hole in the middle containing meat". Despite popular belief, there is no record of the dish ever being made with toad. The origin of the name is unclear, but it may refer to the way toads wait for their prey in their burrows, making their heads visible in the earth, just like the sausages peep through the batter. It may also derive from the "Antediluvian Toad", a phenomenon of live frogs or toads being found encased in stone, which was a scientific fad of the late 18th century. Toad in the hole