Home › A Group of Foreign Soups › Croutons
Croutons
Cut bread (stale) into 1/2-inch slices, remove the crust, and cut into 1/2-inch strips and then into 1/2-inch cubes. Fry in hot clarified fat until lightly browned, then drain; or place in baking-pan in very hot oven, and serve.
To be either wholesome or palatable, fish must be thoroughly cooked. If boiled sufficiently the flesh is apt to break in pieces, and since boiling extracts the juice, unless it is one of the finer flavored fish, it is improved by some other method of cooking than boiling. The more common varieties can be boiled to advantage; salmon is a perfect fish for boiling, keeping its delicious flavor unimpaired. Mackerel is one of the best fish for boiling, and a thick cut of halibut is delicious boiled and served with a Hollandaise or egg sauce. Cod, bluefish, and haddock may be either boiled or steamed by handling carefully to prevent their breaking, and made very tempting by the garnishing of lemon that is required and by serving with them a highly seasoned sauce. If there is no fish-kettle, a drainer on which to boil the fish may be improvised by using a perforated pie-plate. Fasten a strong twine or piece of picture wire through the holes in opposite sides of the plate in such a way that it will serve as handles to lift by without tipping from side to side. On this lay the fish, and let it down in the kettle. Or an ordinary plate may be used, tying it in a square of muslin. By this means the fish can be lifted out of the water without breaking.
If the fish is of a very tender variety, binding it with strips of cheesecloth or thin muslin will prevent its breaking and keep it in shape. Boiling should be done gently, as rapid boiling will cause the outside to fall apart before it is thoroughly cooked inside.
Lemon should always enter into the cooking or serving of fish; nothing else will as effectually cut the oil, though a piquant sauce made with the best of vinegar will, by its high seasoning, be a sufficient dressing for the drier or less oily kinds.
From six to ten minutes for each pound, according to the thickness of the fish or cut, is required for boiling. It is done when the flesh is tender and falls easily from the bone.
A two-line method that still holds up: the only variables are the fat, the heat and how evenly you cut the bread.
- Very hot ovenIn books of this period "very hot" is generally taken to mean somewhere around 450-475F. Spread the cubes in a single layer and shake the pan once or twice; eight to twelve minutes is usually enough, and they will keep browning for a moment after they leave the heat.
- Clarified fatThe recipe does not say which. Clarified butter or a rendered animal fat would both suit, and the point of clarifying is that the milk solids in whole butter scorch before the bread colours. Clarified butter or ghee gives the closest flavour; a neutral oil works and browns more evenly.
- Frying temperatureThe fat should be around 350-375F, deep enough that the cubes float and turn. Cooler fat is absorbed rather than sealed out and the croutons come out heavy.
- Stale bread mattersThe instruction is not incidental. Day-old bread with a dry crumb holds its cube shape and takes up far less fat; fresh bread collapses and turns greasy. If your loaf is soft, dry the cubes in a low oven for ten minutes first.
- Even diceThe half-inch-strip-then-cube sequence exists so every piece cooks at the same rate. Ragged cubes give you scorched corners alongside raw centres.
- Yield and timingA few slices cut into half-inch cubes will give you a couple of cups, enough to garnish several bowls of soup. Fry or bake them the same day and add them at the table, since they soften within a minute or two in hot liquid.
- SeasoningThe original leaves them plain, as a neutral garnish. Salt while still warm from the fat if the soup is mild; a clove of garlic bruised in the frying fat and then discarded is one modern variation.
Crouton is the French croûton, a diminutive of croûte, crust, and the word came into English cookery vocabulary along with the rest of the professional French kitchen's garnish terminology during the nineteenth century. The technique is older than the name, and is at bottom a thrift measure -- stale bread, cut small and crisped in the fat already on hand, turned into something a hostess could serve without apology.