Croutons
Thrifty cooks have been finding creative ways for using up stale bread since the beginning of time. The connection between stale bread and soup dates to the Medieval times, when soup was served in sops (pieces of stale bread). French onion soup is classically topped with a <A href="http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsoups.html#frenchonionsoup">crust of stale bread
Croutons, purposely spiced and gently toasted, are more refined twist on this culinary theme. One might reasonably argue croutons were inspired by
biscotti and other ancient twice baked goods.
"Crouton. Derived from the French crouton, has been an English word since early in the 19th century, whereas two other connected French culinary terms, croute and croustade, have remained French...All these terms derive from the Latin word crusta, meaning 'shell'. Thus the outside of a loaf of bread is the crust or croute. Crouton, the diminutive form, usually refers to the familiar little cubes of toasted or fried bread which might originally have been cut from a crust...It first appears in French in the 17th century when it is described as 'a little piece of bread crust served with drinks'. In recent times, croutons are often added to fish soups, and occasionally to certain salads."
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Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 229)
"Croutes for soup. Thick slices of French bread (flute) which have been partly hollowed out or cut in two lengthways and dried in the oven. Croutes are served with all kinds of soups, usually separately, either plain, garnished or filled...In the Middle Ages, the thin slices of bread soaked in stock, wine or milk, which were served with gruels or liquid stews, were called soupes. Later the name croute was given to lightly browned slices of bread served after the soup: these were coated with puree, garnished with crayfish or asparagus tips, and moistened with partridge gravy or cooked au gratin using Parmesan cheese."
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Larousse Gastronomique, Completely Revised and Updated edition [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 380)
The
Larousse de la Langue Francaise [Librarie Larousse:Paris, 1969 ] traces the word crouton in French print to 1596. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the oldest instance of the word crouton in [English] is 1806. You can view several
19th century crouton recipes published in American cookbooks courtesy of Michigan State University's digital cookbook collection (recipe search: crouton).