Crouton - Dishes

Dishes

A dish prepared à la Grenobloise (in the Grenoble manner) has a garnish of small croutons along with brown butter, capers, parsley, and lemon.

French onion soup is usually topped with croutons and melted cheese.

Dried and cubed bread is commonly sold in large bags in North America to make Thanksgiving holiday stuffing or dressing, though these are generally different than salad croutons, being only dry bread instead of buttered or oiled and with different seasonings, if any.

Thrifty cooks have been finding creative ways for using up stale bread since bread was invented. 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 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."