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Crackers with Cheese
Arrange zephyrettes or saltines in pan. Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake until cheese is melted.
Croûtons (Duchess Crusts) Cut stale bread in one-third inch slices and remove crusts. Spread thinly with butter. Cut slices in one-third inch cubes, put in pan and bake until delicately brown, or fry in deep fat.
Two soup accompaniments run together in one entry: a cheese cracker and a buttered crouton. Neither gives a temperature, so the numbers below fill the gap.
- ZephyrettesA very thin, crisp commercial cracker sold under that trade name in the period. Any thin unsalted or lightly salted cracker stands in; saltines, as the original allows, work perfectly well.
- Oven heatNeither operation is given a temperature. For the crackers use a moderate oven, 350F, for 5 to 8 minutes, just until the cheese slackens and glosses. For the croutons the same 350F for 10 to 15 minutes, turning the pan once, gives even colour.
- The cheeseThe recipe says only "grated cheese"; a dry, sharp cheddar of the American or English factory type is the likely intent. Choose something aged enough to melt without weeping; young mild cheese floods the cracker with fat and softens it.
- Watch the meltThe hinge of the cracker recipe is stopping the moment the cheese has melted. Past that point the fat separates and the cracker goes limp and greasy rather than staying crisp under the soup spoon.
- One-third inchAn odd measure to modern eyes but a deliberate one: cut the bread just under a centimetre thick, then into cubes of the same dimension, so the croutons brown through rather than staying doughy in the middle.
- Stale breadGenuinely dry day-old bread, not fresh. Fresh crumb absorbs the butter unevenly and steams instead of crisping. A firm white loaf is what is meant, not an open-crumbed sourdough.
- Deep fryingIf frying rather than baking, hold the fat at 350 to 365F and work in small batches; buttered cubes colour fast. Drain on paper the moment they are golden.
- YieldNeither is given one. Four slices of bread make roughly two cups of croutons; how many crackers or croutons to a serving is left to the cook.
Both of these are soup accompaniments: cream soups and pur o to want something crisp and savoury alongside. The alternative name given for the croutons, Duchess Crusts, may reflect the late-nineteenth-century habit of borrowing French titles for dressed-up versions of plain things -- the same impulse behind pommes duchesse -- though the connection is traditional rather than documented. Zephyrettes were a proprietary cracker of the era, and the fact that a brand is named without explanation suggests how far packaged crackers had entered the American pantry.