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Croustades, or Dresden Patties
These are patties made very much of the same shape as vol-au-vents, bread being used instead of puff paste. They are best made as follows. Cut thick slices from a French roll, scoop a hollow in the centre, and fry them in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Drain, and dry them in the oven for a few minutes. They should then be filled with very nicely-seasoned mince, moistened with a little stiff white sauce. The crust of the roll may be removed or not before frying. Time to fry, ten minutes. Probable cost, rolls, 1d. each. Sufficient, allow one croustade for each person.
A fried bread case standing in for puff pastry — quick to make, but the frying time in the original will give you charcoal.
- Frying timeTen minutes is far too long for bread in hot fat. At 350-375F a scooped round browns in 1-2 minutes per side; watch it rather than the clock, and lift it out while it is still golden.
- The hinge: dry, firm breadFresh crumb soaks fat like a sponge. Use bread a day or two old, cut slices a good 1.5 inches thick, and let the scooped cases sit out for an hour before they meet the fat.
- "A French roll"In this period a small, soft-crumbed white roll, closer to a modern dinner roll than to anything sourdough. Any firm white bread that can be cut thick and hollowed will serve.
- Drying in the ovenThe book gives no temperature, only "a few minutes" in the oven; a low oven is enough to drive off surface grease and firm the shell. Do it on a rack, not a flat tray, or the base steams.
- "Stiff white sauce"A thick béchamel — roughly a tablespoon each of butter and flour to half a cup of milk, cooked out until it barely falls from the spoon. Too loose and the case collapses before it reaches the table.
- The minceCooked meat, chopped small, rather than raw: mince in entries of this kind generally meant meat left from a previous meal — chicken, veal, ham or game — though this entry does not specify. Bring the mixture to a good simmer before it goes into the shells, since the fried bread will not cook it further.
- Timing the assemblyFill at the last moment. A croustade standing filled for even ten minutes goes soft at the base.
- Yield and costOne per person as the book says, as a savoury or light entrée; two or three if they are the whole of a lunch. The penny-a-roll costing is Victorian and of no use except as a reminder that this was thrift cookery.
Croustade comes from the same root as crust — the French croustade, generally traced through Provençal croustado, with Italian crostata a cognate rather than the parent — and the whole family of dishes exists to give a soft, saucy filling something to sit in. The alternative name here, Dresden patties, is of unknown origin; it is often said to reflect the nineteenth-century English habit of attaching Continental city names to fashionable small dishes, and in any case should not be read as evidence of a Saxon origin. What the entry really records is economy: vol-au-vent cases demanded puff paste, butter and a skilled hand, while a stale roll and a pan of dripping produced something that looked much the same on a supper table. The croustade is a vehicle — the book expects the cook to fill it with whatever cold meat the larder has yielded.