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Croutons
Cut some slices a third of an inch in thickness off a kitchen loaf and cut from these with an ordinary paste-cutter or a sharp knife, crescents, squares, lozenges, oblongs, ovals, rounds, stars, or any other shape desired; fry them in boiling fat, but using butter in preference. The frying basket gives a more even color, but the fryingpan, with plenty of fat, butter or oil, may be used, if more convenient. Drain on a cloth or paper before using. For Soups: Cut the slices of bread half an inch thick, and then into dice. Fry them as before, drain and service in a deep plate, or sliver covered dish.
A workaday garnish rather than a dish, but the details matter: croutons are one of the few things in this book that fail entirely if the fat is the wrong temperature.
- The hinge: fat temperature"Boiling fat" means fat at about 350-375F, not fat that is bubbling from water. Below that the bread drinks oil and goes greasy; above it the outside colours before the centre dries.
- Butter in preferenceWhole butter at frying heat will brown and burn within a minute or two because of its milk solids. Clarified butter or ghee gives the flavour Oscar is after without the scorching, or use half butter and half neutral oil and watch it closely.
- A kitchen loafA plain, unsweetened household white loaf, bought whole and unsliced. Bread a day or two old cuts far more cleanly at a third of an inch and absorbs less fat; modern soft supermarket slices tear under a cutter.
- Paste-cutterWhat the book calls a paste-cutter is a pastry or aspic cutter. Any small cookie cutter works for the crescents, stars and lozenges, which were cut for garnishing plated dishes rather than for soup.
- Frying basketThe basket is for deep fat and does give more even colour, but it also means the pieces move together. Shake it once or twice so nothing welds into a raft.
- Two thicknessesA third of an inch for shaped garnish croutons, a full half inch cut into dice for soup. The thicker dice hold their crunch longer in hot liquid.
- DrainingDrain on paper the moment they come out and salt them at once while the surface is still hot; salt will not stick later. Spread them in a single layer or the trapped steam softens them.
- Yield and keepingTwo or three slices of bread should give roughly enough dice for four bowls of soup. They will keep a couple of days airtight once fully cool, though they lose the butter aroma quickly.
Crouton is simply the French diminutive of croûte, crust, and the fried bread garnish long predates the restaurant kitchens that formalised it. What is characteristic of the Waldorf period is the insistence on shape: crescents, lozenges and stars cut with a paste-cutter belong to the elaborate plating of late nineteenth-century service à la russe, where a fried bread crescent bordered a serving dish or propped up a filet. The soup dice at the end of the entry are the humbler survivor, and the instruction there is simply that they be served in a deep plate, or a silver covered dish. Oscar Tschirky, who was not a cook but the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, gathered entries like this one.