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Browned Bread-Crums
Brown the melted fat, being careful not to scorch it. Add the crums and brown slowly, stirring constantly. Serve hot. This is a convenient way to prepare crums when an oven is not available.
A stovetop method for buttered crumbs, used in this book as a topping for vegetables, baked fish and creamed dishes. The proportions are left to the cook, so work from a ratio.
- Working proportionAbout 2 tablespoons of butter or other fat to 1 cup of soft crumbs gives crumbs that brown evenly without going greasy. Increase the fat slightly for dry, fine crumbs, which absorb more.
- "Brown the melted fat" is the hingeThe fat is cooked first, on its own, until it smells nutty and takes on a light tan colour. That browning is where the flavour comes from, and it happens in seconds once the milk solids in butter begin to colour, so keep the pan on moderate heat and watch it.
- Crumbs, not dry breadcrumbs from a canThe recipe does not say what kind of crumbs, but soft crumbs from day-old bread are the usual reading for a stovetop method of this sort. Commercial dry crumbs are much finer and will brown in under a minute; panko browns unevenly and stays coarse.
- Heat and timeMedium heat, 3 to 5 minutes for soft crumbs, stirring the whole time. They pass from pale gold to burnt very quickly at the edges of the pan, so pull them off while slightly lighter than you want.
- Why the oven is mentionedThe recipe's closing line implies the usual method was to brown buttered crumbs in the oven; the book itself gives no temperature or timing for that. The stovetop version is offered for when the oven is not free or not available.
- Serving and yieldOne cup of crumbs dresses a large dish of buttered cabbage, cauliflower or noodles for four to six. Add them at the table or the moment before serving; sitting on hot moist food they soften within minutes.
- KeepingCooled completely, browned crumbs will keep for a few days in a tight jar, though buttered crumbs go rancid sooner than plain dry ones, so cool storage or the freezer is safer.
Buttered crumbs are one of the oldest cheap garnishes in European cooking, standing in for a sauce on boiled vegetables and for pastry on a gratin. In Central and Eastern European kitchens the same preparation dresses noodles, dumplings and pierogi; in Polish cooking the browned crumbs poured over cauliflower or green beans are made with bułka tarta, the grated dry breadcrumb itself. An entry like this belongs to a household that saved stale bread as a matter of course, and to a table where a plain boiled vegetable was expected to arrive with something on it. The note about ovens is a reminder that a range oven was slow to heat and often reserved for the main business of the meal.