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Mock Almonds (Cut stale bread in one-eighth)
Cut stale bread in one-eighth inch slices, shape with a round cutter one and one-half inches in diameter, then shape in almond-shaped pieces. Brush over with melted butter, put in a pan, and bake until delicately browned.
This is a soup garnish rather than a dish in its own right — shaped croutons meant to be scattered over a purée at the moment of serving. The whole point is uniformity, so work with bread that is dry enough to cut cleanly.
- The hinge: truly stale breadFresh bread compresses under a cutter and tears when you trim it to a point. Use bread a day or two old, or dry the slices in a low oven for a few minutes before cutting.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A moderate oven of around 350°F should brown these in roughly 8 to 12 minutes, but watch them from early on, since eighth-inch slices go from pale to dark quickly.
- The shaping, plainlyStamp out 1½-inch rounds, then cut each round into a pointed oval — one cut on each side of the circle, meeting at a tip. A small paring knife is faster than trying to find an almond-shaped cutter.
- ButterThe recipe says only to brush over with melted butter; a light hand is worth it, as soaked bread steams rather than crisps and butter-heavy croutons turn greasy as they cool in hot soup.
- YieldThe original specifies no yield; a standard sandwich loaf slice will give roughly three or four rounds.
- ServingBest added at the table rather than in the kitchen: they soften within a minute or two of hitting liquid.
- KeepingCooled completely, they should keep for several days in a tin. A plastic bag traps enough moisture to make them leathery.
These belong with the cream and purée soups -- those thickened with white sauce rather than built on bones -- which lean heavily on garnishes for interest, alongside plain croutons and bread sticks. The "mock" in the title is doing the same work it does in mock turtle soup and mock apple pie: nineteenth-century American cookery liked naming a cheap thing after the expensive thing it resembled, and here the resemblance is purely visual. The shaping also reflects the period's taste for uniform, cut-out garnishes, a habit borrowed from French practice, where bread and pastry were routinely stamped into shapes before going near a soup plate.