No. 3021

Golden Crusts

Croutes Dorees

Scrape off the crust from some table flutes and cut them in slices half an inch thick, then range them one beside the other on a dish; pour over a little sweetened raw cream mixed with a few egg-yolks. Let the crusts soak for ten to twelve minutes, basting them over with the cream, and then take them out and extract the moisture lightly; dip them into slightly sweetened beaten eggs, then drain and plunge them into hot frying fat a few at a time; drain as fast as they brown nicely, and bestrew the surfaces with sugar; serve with fruit preserves or else an English vanilla sauce (No. 3004).

← No. 3020 Croustades of Venice, Meringued Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3022 Crusts of Pineapple, Apricot Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is pain perdu given the Delmonico treatment: bread soaked in sweetened cream and yolks, then egged and deep-fried rather than griddled. The hinge is the soak — long enough to saturate, short enough that the slices still hold together when lifted.

Table flutesA flûte is a slender loaf of the baguette family, with a fine, close crumb. Any day-old white bread with a tight crumb works; stale bread is preferable to fresh, since it drinks the cream without collapsing. Trimming the crust, as directed, keeps the slices from curling in the fat.
"Raw cream"Ranhofer appears to mean cream that has not been cooked into a custard, as opposed to the cooked vanilla sauce served alongside. Use heavy cream; it is pasteurised now, and the whole soak is cooked through in the fryer in any case.
ProportionsNone are given. For eight half-inch slices, about 1 cup cream with 3 yolks and 2 tablespoons sugar for the soak, and 2 whole eggs lightly sweetened for the dip, is in the right territory.
Extract the moisture lightlyThis means blotting, not squeezing. Lift each slice on a spatula and let it drain a moment on a rack or cloth; a slice carrying free cream on its surface will spit in the fat and shed its egg coating.
Frying fatAround 350–360°F. Below that the bread absorbs fat and turns heavy; above it the egg coating colours before the interior has set. Fry a few at a time, as instructed, so the temperature does not crash.
Sugar the moment they leave the fatThe sugar must go on while the surfaces are still hot and slightly damp with oil, or it will not adhere. A fine caster sugar clings better than granulated.
English vanilla sauceNo. 3004 is crème anglaise — milk or cream, yolks, sugar and vanilla, stirred over low heat until it coats the spoon and never allowed to boil. Any standard pouring custard serves the same purpose.
Yield and timingReckon two slices per person as a hot sweet at the end of a meal. They must be fried and served at once; held even fifteen minutes, the crisp shell softens against the wet interior.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of the restaurant's kitchen, and the entremets chapters are dense with sweet fried breads of this kind. Croûtes dorées — golden crusts — belongs to the same family as pain perdu, "lost bread," the long-standing French thrift dish of reviving stale loaves in egg and milk; versions of the idea appear in European cookery well before the modern French name attached to it. What distinguishes Ranhofer's treatment is that it is not thrift at all: the bread is crusted off, soaked in sweetened cream rather than milk, given a second coat of egg, deep-fried instead of pan-fried, and sent out with preserves or custard. It is a peasant economy turned into a restaurant dessert, which is a fair description of a good deal of what happened to French cookery in the nineteenth century.