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Imperial Sticks in Rings
Cut stale bread in one-third inch slices, remove crusts, spread thinly with butter, and cut slices in one-third inch strips and rings; put in pan and bake until delicately browned. Arrange three sticks in each ring.
A soup garnish rather than a dish: buttered bread batons threaded through bread rings, served alongside a cream soup. The whole trick is in the cutting.
- OvenThe book gives none. Bake at 350F on a sheet pan for 8 to 12 minutes, turning the pan once, until the strips are pale gold. Past that the butter darkens and the sticks taste scorched rather than toasty.
- Cutting the ringsA ring here is a slice of bread cut with a round cutter, the centre then removed with a smaller one, leaving a band roughly a third of an inch wide, as the recipe's 'one-third inch strips and rings' implies. The recipe gives no diameter. Thin, floppy sandwich bread will tear; use a firm-crumbed loaf.
- Why stale breadDay-old bread cuts cleanly and dries in the oven instead of steaming. Fresh bread compresses under the knife and the rings will not hold their shape when you thread the sticks through.
- Butter thinly, and mean itSpread before cutting, and only a scraping. Heavily buttered strips slump and fry rather than crisp, and greasy sticks collapse the moment they touch hot soup.
- AssemblyThread the three sticks through each ring while everything is still warm and flexible. Cooled, crisped bread snaps.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield. A single slice will not go far once the crusts are off, so cut spares against breakage. Serve at the last minute, dry, beside the bowl, not floating in it.
- KeepingThey can be baked several hours ahead and held uncovered at room temperature, then given two minutes in a warm oven to refresh. Airtight storage softens them.
This is one of a long list of "soup accompaniments" that Fannie Farmer appended to her soup chapters -- croutons, bread sticks, cheese straws, fried crusts -- all ways of turning stale bread into something a hostess could put on the table without apology. The Boston Cooking-School tradition took such garnishes seriously as an exercise in knife work and presentation. The name looks decorative rather than descriptive: "imperial" may well have been little more than a showy label, much as "royal" and "a la reine" seem to have been, and no particular court or chef need be looked for behind it. What the recipe really records is a household economy in which bread was never thrown out and a plain cream soup was expected to arrive with something crisp beside it.