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CRUMBS, FRIED BREAD (with which to dredge Hams or Bacon)
Place a crust of bread in a cool oven; when it is crisp and brown, roll it into dust with a rolling-pin, pass it through a coarse sieve, and bottle the powder until wanted. Or, put the crumbs of bread into a frying-pan with a little clarified butter, stir them constantly till they are brightly browned, and drain them before the fire. Time to fry, five or six minutes; time to brown the crust, it should be left all night in a cool oven.
Two methods for the same thing: browned breadcrumbs, called "raspings" in older books, used to coat the cut face and fat of a boiled ham or a piece of bacon. Both are simple, and the only real difficulty is translating an overnight "cool oven" into a modern appliance.
- A cool oven, overnightThis assumes a coal or wood range holding residual heat after the fire was banked; the book gives no temperature, but a modern equivalent is somewhere in the region of 200-250F. In a modern oven, 250F for 45 minutes to an hour dries and colours a crust thoroughly; check it rather than leaving it unattended for hours.
- The crust must be bone dryThe hinge of the first method. If any moisture remains in the centre, the crumbs will not powder under the pin, and damp crumbs risk spoiling in a sealed bottle. Snap a piece: it should break cleanly with no leathery core.
- Bread to useA plain white loaf a day or two old, close-crumbed. Modern soft sandwich bread with added sugar and fat browns unevenly and scorches; a firm bakery loaf behaves like the bread the book assumes.
- Rolling-pin and sieveA food processor does the crushing in seconds, but still pass the result through a coarse sieve — the point of sieving is uniform grains that colour evenly and sit smoothly on the ham, not fineness.
- Clarified butter for the fried versionWhole butter will brown and then burn well before the crumbs are ready. Clarified butter or ghee holds up for the five or six minutes of constant stirring; keep the heat moderate and do not step away, as crumbs go from gold to black quickly.
- "Drain them before the fire"This means spreading them on paper near the hearth to shed fat and finish crisping. Drain on kitchen paper and spread on a tray in a low oven, or simply leave them somewhere warm and dry for a few minutes.
- StorageThe oven-dried crumbs keep for months in a sealed jar. The fried ones contain butter and will turn rancid; use them within a few days, or refrigerate.
- Yield and useOne large crust or two thick slices gives roughly a cup of crumbs; scale up for a large joint. Press them on while the fat is still warm and slightly tacky so they adhere; they also serve for coating croquettes and cutlets and for topping gratins.
Browned breadcrumbs were standard equipment in a Victorian larder, and the older English name for them — raspings — reflects one way they were made, by rasping or grating the hard crust off a loaf with a file-like tool. A boiled ham was rarely sent to table bare: the skin came off, the fat was scored, and the surface was coated with raspings, sometimes mixed with sugar or spice, to give colour, a dry edge to carve against, and a barrier against the air on a joint that might be picked at cold for a week. The double method here — a slow, fuel-free technique using the dying heat of the range and a quicker one at the stove — reflects a period when heat was a resource to be scheduled rather than switched on. Thrift is the other subtext: crusts and stale ends were never thrown out in a household that had a use for every part of the loaf.