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Rice Croquettes (Boil rice until it)
Boil rice until it is thoroughly done, and dry. To every half-pound of rice, allow two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, one teaspoonful of mace, and butter to moisten it. Chop six tablespoonfuls of the breast of boiled or roast chicken or turkey and the soft parts of six large oysters, a little parsley, a grated nutmeg, and the yellow rind of a lemon. Moisten with cream so that all may be thoroughly mixed. Then take a portion of the rice the size of an egg, flatten it and in the center put a dessert-spoonful of the mixture and close the rice around it; cover with the whisked yolk of egg, roll in pulverized cracker, brown in boiling lard and serve hot.
A stuffed and fried rice ball in the Italian manner, with a filling of poultry, oyster and cheese. The success of the dish depends almost entirely on how dry the rice is before you start shaping.
- Dry rice is the hingeRice that is at all wet will not hold a seam around the filling and will burst in the fat. Cook it soft, then spread it on a tray and let it cool and steam off completely; short or medium grain holds together far better than long grain.
- "Half-pound of rice"The original does not say whether this is raw or cooked weight. Read it as about 1 cup of raw rice, which cooks to roughly 3 cups and takes the cheese, mace and butter comfortably.
- SpicesA whole grated nutmeg plus a teaspoon of mace is a great deal by current taste, and both are the same spice family. A quarter teaspoon of mace in the rice and a few scrapes of nutmeg in the filling gives the intended effect.
- Oysters"The soft parts" means the body of the oyster with the tough adductor muscle trimmed away. Give them a brief poach in their own liquor until the edges just curl before chopping; the frying time is too short to be relied on to cook a raw oyster buried in the center of a rice ball.
- Lemon rindZest only, taken with a fine grater or peeled and minced. Any white pith turns bitter against the cream and cheese.
- Dessert-spoonfulAbout two teaspoons. That is the correct scale of filling for an egg-sized portion of rice; more and the seam will not close.
- Coating and fat"Pulverized cracker" is fine cracker crumbs, and plain unsalted saltines work. Yolk alone is a thin bond, so chill the shaped croquettes at least half an hour before coating and fry at 350-375F, four or five at a time, until deep gold.
- YieldAbout twelve croquettes, serving four as a first course or light supper dish with a green salad.
Rice croquettes were a common feature of American cookbooks from the later nineteenth century onward, and this version, with its filling of chopped poultry sealed inside a shell of cheesed rice, is recognizably the same idea as Sicilian arancini and Roman supplì — dishes whose frequently repeated derivation from the medieval Arab presence in Sicily is traditional rather than documented. What marks the recipe as turn-of-the-century American is the oyster: shellfish were cheap and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans, and cooks added them to croquettes, forcemeats and sauces the way a later generation would reach for a bouillon cube. The dish also does the useful work of consuming yesterday's roast bird, which is why many books of this period file croquettes among the made-over dishes rather than the roasts.