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Crisps
4 slices of bread salt butter cayenne Spread bread with butter or dip in melted butter.
Sprinkle with seasonings. Remove crusts and cut in long narrow strips. Brown in slow oven.
Rings may be cut from the prepared bread and browned in the oven. Three of the narrow strips may be inserted in each ring.
Croûtons Cut bread one fourth inch in thickness, remove crust. Cut slices in strips, and strips in cubes. Dip in melted butter, brown in the oven or fry in deep fat. 4 cup butter * cup flour ½ cup water
Two versions of the same idea: buttered bread dried in a low oven until it snaps. The whole thing turns on the oven being slow enough to dry the bread through before the surface colours.
- "Slow oven"In cookbooks of this kind that usually means somewhere in the 250-325F range; the book itself gives no temperature. At the low end the strips dry through to the centre rather than colouring quickly, which is what the instruction is after.
- The breadMost likely intended for a firm, close-grained white loaf; the recipe specifies neither the type nor that it be stale. Modern soft sandwich bread tends to collapse under melted butter, so a plain white sourdough or pain de mie holds up better. Note that the quarter-inch thickness is given for the croutons, not for the crisps.
- CayenneUsed here as a seasoning in small amounts. A scant 1/8 teaspoon spread over four slices is plenty for a savoury edge without heat taking over.
- Butter, spread or dippedDipping gives the crisper result but soaks up a surprising amount; budget 3-4 tablespoons melted for four slices. Brush both sides instead if you want them lighter.
- The rings and stripsA garnish assembly rather than a shape for its own sake. Bake the rings flat, then stand three strips upright in each ring, as the recipe directs. A cutter of around 2 inches suits, though the book gives no size and does not say what the assembly was meant to accompany.
- CroutonsOven-drying in the same slow oven takes roughly 20 minutes with a toss partway; in deep fat they colour in about a minute and should be drained at once. The book specifies no temperature for either. Fried ones soften sooner than oven-dried ones, which keep well in a tin.
- The stray line at the end"4 cup butter, * cup flour, ½ cup water" belongs to the next recipe in the book, most likely a white sauce or paste, and has been carried over in transcription. Ignore it here.
- YieldFour slices give roughly four servings of strips; the crouton yield depends on how thick the slices are cut.
Crisps and croûtons serve the same purpose in an American cookbook of this period that packaged crackers and croutons do now: the recipe is really a use for stale bread dressed up as a garnish. The word croûton is the diminutive of French croûte, crust, and it entered English cookery writing through the same nineteenth-century channel that brought bouillon and consommé to the American table, where fussy little bread shapes were expected alongside soups and creamed dishes. Cookbooks of the era characteristically framed thoroughly dried, twice-baked bread as more digestible than fresh, an idea generally traced to the dietary writers of the day rather than to any measured evidence.