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Sippets, Superlative
Cut slices the third of an inch thick from a stale loaf. Trim away the crust, lay the bread on a dish, and pour upon it as much cream or good milk as it will absorb. Let it soak for an hour, then take it up carefully, and fry it in hot fat till it is lightly browned. Drain, and serve hot. Or cut the crumb of a stale loaf into slices as thin as a sixpence; stamp these into fancy shapes, and fry in hot fat till crisp. Sippets thus made are useful for making borders to dishes, and may be fixed in position with a paste made with white of egg and flour.
Two garnishes under one heading: a soft, cream-soaked fried bread and a crisp cut-out crouton for edging a dish. Both depend on bread that is dry enough to hold its shape.
- Stale means dry, not spoiledA close-crumbed unsliced white loaf, a day or two old and left uncovered, is what is wanted. Fresh supermarket sandwich bread is too soft and too sweet; it collapses in the cream and browns unevenly.
- The thicknessesA third of an inch is about 8 mm. "Thin as a sixpence" means about a millimetre — a sixpence was a small, thin silver coin — so cut as thin as you can manage with a serrated knife, or use a mandoline.
- The soak is the hingePour on only as much cream or whole milk as the bread will take up and no more. Slices sitting in a pool go to porridge and cannot be lifted; an hour on a dry dish with just enough liquid leaves them saturated but liftable, ideally with a slotted turner.
- Frying fat and heatClarified butter, lard or a neutral oil, hot but not smoking; the book says only "hot fat", and 350-375F is the usual modern range. Soaked slices carry moisture and will spit, so keep the fat no more than a third up the pan and turn once. The thin cut-outs crisp in well under a minute and go from gold to black quickly.
- Drain properlyOnto paper or a rack, never a closed plate — trapped steam softens the crust you just made. Salt the crisp sippets while hot if they are going with a savoury dish.
- The egg-white pasteWhite of egg beaten with a little flour is a period edible cement for standing sippets up around a mould or a cold entrée. It is not cooked, and it is not meant to be eaten; for anything served hot, simply lean the shapes against the dish.
- Yield and useReckon roughly two or three of the thick, cream-soaked slices per person as a sweet or a savoury base; a single slice may yield half a dozen or so stamped shapes, depending on the cutter. Both are best made shortly before serving.
"Sippet" appears to be a diminutive of sop — a small piece of bread for dipping — and by the nineteenth century it was used for a fried or toasted bread garnish, cut in triangles, diamonds or fancy shapes, laid round soups, hashes, minces and made dishes. The first, cream-soaked version is close to the treatment that gives pain perdu and French toast, served plain, sugared, or under a savoury as a sop for the sauce; the thin stamped kind belongs to the era's taste for architectural presentation, where a cold pie or a mound of mince might arrive fenced in with a border of crisp gilded bread.