The burnt toast is likely a mistaken reference to a Canadian Heritage Minute about an epileptic woman who smelled burnt toast when she had seizures. A pioneering neurosurgeon kept his patients awake while probing their exposed brain to find and burn out malfunctioning nerves. It is actually epilepsy not a stroke that the burnt toast thing is associated with, not that everyone with epilepsy smells burnt toast, that was just the famous one that most Canadians of a certain age will know.

Here it is for anyone curious. youtu.be/pUOG2g4hj8s?si=ZdFcRR0a3Q3FaAf4