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Croutons
Cut stale slices of bread half an inch thick. Trim off crusts (which may be set aside and used for puddings), butter the slices, and cut into half-inch cubes. Place on shallow pan and brown in a hot oven, turning them so that they may not burn.
Serve with soup.
A sound method that still beats bagged croutons, with two details worth attention: the butter goes on before the bread is cubed, and a hot oven works fast.
- Hot oven"Hot oven" in books of this period generally means somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat half-inch cubes should colour in something like 8 to 10 minutes; the recipe's own instruction to turn them so they do not burn is the reliable guide.
- Butter the slice, not the cubesSpreading the whole slice and then cutting is quicker and more even than trying to coat loose cubes. Soft butter, not melted, or the bread turns greasy at the edges.
- Stale means dry, not mouldyDay-old firm white bread or a plain sandwich loaf works best. Fresh bread steams rather than crisps; if all you have is fresh, leave the cut cubes uncovered on the pan for an hour first.
- Single layer"Shallow pan" matters. Crowded cubes trap moisture and go leathery in the middle; spread them so each one sits on the metal.
- YieldFour slices of sandwich bread give roughly 3 cups of cubes, enough to garnish six to eight bowls of soup.
- KeepingCool completely before storing or the residual steam softens them. Airtight at room temperature they hold a week; re-crisp for three minutes in a hot oven.
- The crustsThe book's instinct to save them is worth following. Dried and crushed they are ordinary dry breadcrumbs, useful for coating or for the puddings the recipe itself points to.
Crouton is simply the French croûton, a diminutive of croûte, crust — a small piece of crust — and it entered English cookery writing in the nineteenth century along with much of the rest of the professional French garnishing vocabulary. Fried or toasted bread had of course been floated on soup in English and European kitchens for centuries before it acquired the French name; the medieval sop, bread laid in the bottom of the bowl to take up the broth, is the same idea at an earlier stage.