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Cheese Croutons
Cut crusts from thin slices of stale bread and spread lightly with creamed Crisco, then with a layer of cream cheese seasoned with salt and pepper. Cover with a second slice of bread and cut into fingers 1 inch wide, using a sharp knife. Place in a shallow pan and brown in a hot oven.
A closed sandwich baked crisp and cut into fingers — closer to a modern cheese toast soldier than to the small cubed croutons the name now suggests. The whole thing hangs on using genuinely stale bread, which stays flat and dries rather than steaming soft.
- Hot ovenIn period usage roughly 400-450F. At that heat the fingers should colour in a few minutes; watch them and turn them once so both faces brown evenly.
- Creamed CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and this book was published to promote it. "Creamed" simply means beaten soft and spreadable. Softened butter gives better flavour and browning; the shortening's only advantage here is that it stays workable at room temperature.
- Cream cheeseIn 1915 American usage this meant a fresh, soft, unripened cheese, not necessarily the stabilised block sold under that name now. Modern cream cheese works; a fresh farmer's cheese or a soft young cheese beaten smooth is closer to the original.
- The breadThin slices of a day-or-two-old firm white loaf. Fresh bread tears when you spread it and goes leathery rather than crisp in the oven.
- CuttingCut the fingers before baking, not after — a baked sandwich shatters and sheds its filling. A long thin blade, pressed rather than sawed, keeps the layers together.
- Yield and servingFour slices of bread make two sandwiches, giving roughly eight to ten fingers, enough for two to four as an accompaniment. The recipe does not say what to serve them with; like most oven-crisped bread they are best eaten hot, as they soften on standing.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for the Procter & Gamble company, which introduced Crisco in 1911 and needed to teach American cooks what to do with a shortening that was neither butter nor lard. That explains why creamed Crisco turns up in a place a cook would otherwise reach for butter without thinking. The word crouton, from the French for a small crust, covered a much wider range then than now: fried or baked bread in any shape, served under game, floated in soup, or cut into fingers and points as a garnish.