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Ham Croquettes
One cup of cold boiled rice, one cup of lean ham chopped very fine, mix with one egg and a little Worcester sauce, dip in egg, and roll in fine cracker crumbs and fry in boiling hot lard.
A thrifty leftovers dish that depends on two things the original glosses over: a mixture stiff enough to hold, and fat hot enough to seal it instantly.
- Chill before shapingRice and ham bound with a single egg is a loose mixture; refrigerate it at least an hour, then form cylinders or cones and chill again once breaded. Croquettes that go into the fat warm and soft will burst and drink oil.
- "Dip in egg" means a second eggThe egg in the mixture is a binder; the coating needs its own beaten egg, thinned with a spoonful of water or milk. Season the mixture properly first — boiled rice and the breading are both bland, and the salt is coming almost entirely from the ham.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs were generally made from plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine. Plain crackers or dry breadcrumbs work; panko gives a coarser, more modern crust than the recipe intends.
- "Boiling hot lard"Lard does not boil — the phrase is nineteenth-century shorthand for fat at frying heat, roughly 375F. Below that the coating absorbs grease; much above it the crust colours before the centre is hot.
- Depth of fatThe recipe does not specify depth, but 'boiling hot lard' implies enough fat to float them rather than a shallow pan. Allow at least two inches of fat in a heavy pot and fry three or four at a time so the temperature does not crash.
- The hamLean cooked ham, chopped by hand or pulsed briefly, not ground to a paste. Wet-cured deli ham can carry enough moisture to loosen the mixture; blot it before mixing.
- YieldAbout eight small croquettes, enough for two as a main course with a green vegetable or four as a first course. Serve hot with mustard, tomato sauce or a plain cream sauce.
Croquettes recur in turn-of-the-century American cookbooks because they solved a standing domestic problem: what to do with Sunday's ham and the rice left from a previous meal, in a kitchen with limited cold storage and a strong prohibition against waste. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the form was long established in English cookery, though its popularity owed much to the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for French service that gave American tables their entr typically the binder is a thick b old boiled rice instead, as here, is the plainer household shortcut o requiring no sauce-making at all.