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Croûtons
Cut some slices of stale bread about half an inch thick. If the croûtons are required for soup they should be cut into dice, but if for garnishing they may be stamped into any shape, or cut into three-cornered pieces. Fry them in hot salad oil, and drain them on an inverted sieve.
A simple frying job, but the original leaves out the two things that decide whether croûtons come out crisp or greasy: bread age and oil temperature.
- "Salad oil"In books of this period salad oil generally meant olive oil, usually a mild rather than a strongly flavoured one. Any neutral oil with a reasonable smoke point works; olive oil is the likeliest match for the original.
- Oil temperatureThe recipe says only "hot"; in modern terms about 350-375F is the usual working range. Below that the bread absorbs oil and turns leaden; a cube dropped in should sizzle at once and colour in under a minute.
- Stale bread mattersFresh bread has too much moisture and drinks the fat. Day-old or two-day-old bread, or slices dried briefly in a low oven, fry crisp.
- Dice sizeFor soup, cut roughly half-inch dice so they hold shape in the bowl. Stamped shapes for garnish should be cut from the same half-inch slices; thinner bread scorches before the centre dries.
- DrainingThe inverted sieve keeps the croûtons off a flat surface so steam escapes from all sides. A wire rack over a tray does the same thing; paper towel alone leaves the undersides soft.
- Oven methodIf you would rather not fry, toss the cubes with oil and bake at 375F for 10-15 minutes, shaking once. The texture is drier and less rich than fried.
- Yield and keepingTwo thick slices of a standard loaf give a couple of cups of dice, enough for several bowls of soup. Cooled completely, they keep a few days in a tin, but they lose crispness once they meet hot liquid, so add at the table.
Croûton is simply the French diminutive of croûte, crust, and the word arrived in English cookery writing in the nineteenth century alongside a whole vocabulary of French garnishes. The practice behind it is far older and thoroughly domestic: stale bread was too valuable to waste, and frying or toasting it turned the dry end of a loaf into a garnish, a thickener or a base for savouries. In vegetarian and Lenten cooking, croûtons fried in oil rather than dripping supplied the crisp, fatty contrast that a meat garnish would otherwise have provided.