Always sift the bread or cracker crumbs. Whenever there are spare pieces
or trimmings of bread or broken crackers, dry them at once in the oven,
and after pounding and sifting, put them away in a tin can, for future
use. In preparing for use, beat the eggs a little. If they are to be
used for sweet dishes, such as rice croquettes, sweeten them slightly.
If they are to be used for meats, sweet-breads, oysters, etc., always
salt and pepper them, and for a change, finely chopped parsley may be
added. Add a small proportion of milk to the eggs, say a half-cupful for
two of them, or for one of them, if intended for fish or cutlets. Have
the eggs in one plate, and the bread-crumbs in another; roll the article
first in the crumbs, then in the egg, then in the crumbs again. In the
case of articles very soft, like croquettes, it will be more convenient
for one person to shape and roll them in the eggs, and another, with dry
hands, to roll them in the bread-crumbs.
Pounded and sifted cracker-crumbs can be purchased by the pound, at
bakeries and large groceries, for the same price as whole crackers.
However, it will never be necessary to purchase cracker-crumbs, if all
scraps of bread are saved and dried. It is deplorable for a cook to
throw them away. It shows that she is either too indolent to ever learn
to cook, or too ignorant of the uses of scraps of bread to be tolerated.
If she saves them for purposes of charity, let her give fresh bread,
which will be more acceptable, and save the scraps, which are equally
useful to her. Yet if the bread-crumbs when pounded and sifted are not
very fine, they are not as good as the cracker-dust.