The most widely-accepted definition of a touton refers to the dish produced by frying bread dough on a pan in butter or pork fat.

Folklorist Andrea McGuire documented this in an interview with Mary (Murphy) King, originally of Ship Cove, Placentia Bay, who spoke of her mother's interactions with American servicemen in the mid twentieth century: A few of the men “worshipped mom for her bread and her stews and stuff like that … Another thing they never could understand were toutons.” The men would ask Mary’s mother for her bread and touton recipe, which baffled her a little.

She would say, “There’s no recipe, you just mix a bit of this and a bit of that,” but as Mary put it, “Now, they were just as wise as my cat would be, you know, because they couldn’t understand—if you didn’t have a recipe, how would you make bread?”[7] It is much rarer to find them cooked in fatback pork today; the toutons found in local restaurants are more likely fried in a combination of olive oil, clarified butter, or canola oil.

One 1979 account from Bonavista Bay relates,When mother was making bread and dough has risen she would cut pieces off, about the size of a doughnut and fry them.

Wayne Johnston's 1987 novel The Time of Their Lives has a character exclaim, "She loved toutons, balls of fried dough.

"[21] A 2000 newspaper column by Memorial University student Kelley Power references the "full fledged Black Horse drinking, touton eating Newfoundlander.

[24] Bed and breakfast establishments and tour operators within the province serve up toutons to visiting tourists[25] as part of "The True Newfoundland & Labrador.

“We’re so busy in the summertime, my darlin’, I can’t even tell you what day of the week it is.” At the peak of tourist season, Betty says customers have waited up to two hours outside the café for their turn at a table.

[27] Toutons are referenced in the hit musical, Come from Away, and Newfoundland-born original Broadway cast member Petrina Bromley is on record as having introduced her cast-mates to the fried dough version:To begin, it’s pronounced tout-in.

It was kind of magical out under the stars, with the soft sound of the surf behind us and the laughter of this new little family in front of me, and the smell of nan’s bread.

[28]In 2018, Nova Scotia's Andy Hay prepared toutons as his dessert course in the season finale competition of MasterChef Canada.