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Olive Croutons
Cut some neat rounds of bread and fry them in butter. Spread on each a layer of Italian sausage, and pile on the top some chopped olives. Ornament with butter. Serve cold.
A savoury canapé from the era when a small salted bite closed the meal rather than opening it. The whole thing hangs on the bread: fried crisp and drained, it holds; fried soft, it collapses under the topping within minutes.
- "Italian sausage" hereIn an English cookbook of this period the phrase usually indicates a cured, ready-to-eat sausage of the salame type, sliced thin, rather than the raw fresh fennel sausage sold under that name in American shops. A firm salami, cut into rounds slightly smaller than the bread, suits the method.
- Bread and roundsA close-crumbed white loaf, cut about a quarter-inch thick, stamped with a 1.5–2 inch cutter. Thinner rounds turn to glass when cold; thicker ones stay leathery in the middle.
- Frying in butterButter alone browns and burns before the bread crisps. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, over medium heat gives even colour. Drain on paper and cool completely before topping, or the base goes damp.
- The olivesBrine-cured green or black olives, pitted, chopped and then pressed dry in a cloth. Wet olives will soak through the sausage into the crouton. Brine strengths vary, so taste before adding any seasoning.
- "Ornament with butter"Most likely softened butter piped in a rosette or border, though small pats or curls would answer the phrase equally well; either way it is purely decorative. Cream the butter until it holds a shape but is not oily, and chill the finished croutons briefly to set it.
- TimingAssemble no more than an hour before serving. These are meant to be eaten cold, but they do not keep: the bread softens and the piped butter dulls.
- YieldThe original gives none. A small loaf yields roughly 24 rounds, allowing two or three per person as part of a spread of savouries.
Croutons in Victorian and Edwardian usage covered any small shaped base of fried or toasted bread, sweet or savoury, serving sometimes as garnishes for soup, and sometimes, as here, as the foundation of a savoury. The savoury course came after the sweet in a formal English dinner and was built almost entirely on salt, anchovy, cheese and cured meat, on what is often said to be the reasoning that a sharp bite settled the palate before the wine that followed. The recipe is characteristic of the genre in its brevity: the book assumes a cook who already knows how thin to cut bread and how to fill a piping bag, and spends its words only on the assembly.