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Stock, with Fried Bread
Cut a slice of stale crumb of bread into dice; moisten these with stock, put a slice of dripping on them, and fry over a slow fire till they are brown and crisp. Lay them in a dish, and place upon them one or two slices of the crumb of bread which have been soaked in stock and drained. Serve nicely-flavoured stock in a tureen with the bread thus prepared. This dish is one which is specially suited for children and invalids.
A bread-and-broth dish from the invalid-cookery tradition, where the stock does all the work. Everything depends on the quality and seasoning of the broth, because there is nothing else in the bowl.
- The hinge: the stockWith only bread and fat alongside it, a thin or under-seasoned broth gives you nothing. Use a well-reduced, properly salted stock, skimmed of fat, and serve it hot enough to steam when it hits the bread.
- "Crumb of bread"This means the soft interior, crust cut away, not breadcrumbs. A close-textured white loaf a day or two old holds its shape; modern soft sandwich bread collapses into paste.
- DrippingFat saved from roast meat, most often beef. Butter or a neutral oil substitutes directly, though beef dripping gives a more savoury result.
- Moistening before fryingDampening the dice with stock before they go into the fat will make them spit and slows browning considerably. Moisten lightly, blot, and expect a longer time in the pan than for plain croutons.
- "A slow fire"Gentle heat rather than a brisk one. The point is to drive off moisture and crisp the dice through rather than colour the outside fast.
- Yield and servingOne good slice of bread cut into dice plus one or two soaked slices suits a single person, with a cupful or so of stock in the tureen. Assemble at the last moment; the fried dice soften quickly once the broth reaches them.
- Modern seasoningVictorian invalid dishes were deliberately bland. A little pepper, a scrape of nutmeg or some chopped parsley brings it up to contemporary expectations without changing the character.
Bread soaked in broth is one of the oldest ways of making a small amount of meat feed a household, surviving across Europe as the French panade, the Italian zuppa proper (a word often said to have originally meant the sopped bread itself rather than the liquid), and the English "sops in broth" found in medieval and Tudor cookery. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century, the dish was being recommended for children and invalids, a substantial genre in Victorian domestic manuals: invalid diet was thought to require food that was nourishing, warm, easily swallowed and free of anything sharp or highly spiced. The instruction to serve the stock separately in a tureen is characteristic of that thinking, since it lets the attendant control how much liquid the patient takes and keeps the fried dice crisp until the last possible moment.