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Asparagus in Crusts
Remove centres from small rolls, fry shells in deep fat, drain, and fill with Asparagus in White Sauce.
A one-line assembly recipe of the kind Fannie Farmer scattered through her vegetable chapter, assuming you already had the white sauce and the boiled asparagus in hand. The whole thing hinges on the fried shell, which must be crisp and dry enough not to collapse under a wet filling.
- The shellUse firm, close-crumbed dinner rolls a day old; fresh soft rolls soak up fat. Cut off the top, hollow out the crumb leaving walls about half an inch thick, and keep the lid to set back on as a cap.
- Deep fat temperaturePeriod practice judged the fat by a cube of bread, browning in about forty seconds for already-cooked mixtures (longer for raw ones); that is usually reckoned today at somewhere around 375-390F. Cooler than that and the bread drinks oil; hotter and the outside colours before the inside dries. Drain upside down on paper so the cavity does not pool fat.
- Cooking the asparagusDirections of this period run to long boiling, far longer than modern practice. Inch-cut asparagus needs three to five minutes in salted water; drain well or the sauce will thin and the shells go soggy.
- Assemble at the last momentFill the crusts as they go to the table. Even a well-fried shell softens within a few minutes of meeting hot sauce.
- Yield and servingOne roll per person as a luncheon or supper dish, or as a first course.
- If you would rather bakeBrushing the hollowed rolls inside and out with melted butter and crisping them at 375F for 10-12 minutes gives a sturdier, less rich case, though not the same colour or flavour as deep fat.
This is a croustade under a plainer name: a hollowed, fried bread case used as an edible dish, familiar in late-nineteenth-century American and Anglo-French cookery alongside timbale cases, patty shells and pastry vol-au-vents. Cookbooks of the period carry a good many such vessels, because a formal dinner was served in courses that each wanted its own presentation, and a fried crust turned a vegetable and a cup of white sauce into something that could be set down as a course of its own. Asparagus was a short-season luxury, and canned asparagus was available by this date, which is why cookery books of the era often give directions for both fresh and tinned. The white sauce itself is the workhorse of such books, generally set out in proportions -- thin, medium, thick -- so that the cook could vary the consistency at will.