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Rice Croquettes (Take Boil a half pound of rice)
Take Boil a half pound of rice until very soft, then mix two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, one small teaspoon of mace, and enough butter to moisten it. Mince very fine six tablespoonfuls of white meat of chicken or turkey, the soft part of six large oysters, a few sprigs of parsley, a grated nutmeg, and the yellow rind of a lemon; mix well and moisten with cream. a portion of the prepared rice, about the size of an egg, flatten it and put in the center a dessertspoonful of the mixture; close the rice round it and form in the shape of an egg; dip in egg and roll in pounded cracker, and cook in boiling hot lard.
A stuffed croquette in the Victorian manner: a rice shell around a minced chicken-and-oyster filling, shaped like an egg and deep fried. The printed text has lost a word or two — "Take" clearly belongs to the later sentence, "[Take] a portion of the prepared rice, about the size of an egg."
- Chill before you fryThe hinge of the dish. Warm rice will not hold a seam and the croquettes burst in the fat. Cook the rice soft and sticky, cool it completely, form the croquettes, then refrigerate them at least an hour before breading and frying.
- Half a pound of riceAbout 1 1/8 cups dry, yielding roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups cooked. Cook it well past al dente in milk or stock until the grains break down and cling — this is a paste, not a pilaf. Short-grain rice works far better than long-grain here.
- Spice quantitiesA whole grated nutmeg plus a teaspoon of mace across this quantity is overwhelming to a modern palate. A quarter teaspoon of each is nearer the mark.
- The soft part of six oystersMeans the body of the oyster with the tough adductor muscle and mantle frill trimmed away. Chop fine. Six oysters for a whole batch is a seasoning, not a main ingredient.
- Pounded crackerCracker crumbs — soda crackers or plain water biscuits crushed fine. Panko or dry breadcrumbs substitute directly. For a shell that holds, go flour, then egg, then crumb rather than the two-step given.
- Boiling hot lardDeep fat at 350 to 365F. Lard is still the best fat for this, but any neutral oil works. Fry three or four at a time so the temperature holds; four to five minutes gives a brown crust and a filling hot through, which matters since the oyster and cream inside start out raw.
- YieldRoughly twelve to fourteen egg-sized croquettes, serving four to six as a course or a supper dish with a plain cream sauce.
Croquettes were one of the defining forms of late nineteenth-century American cookery, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s carry whole chapters of them. Their appeal was economic as much as culinary: a few tablespoons of leftover roast fowl, extended with rice or thick sauce, breaded and fried, became a dish that could be sent to table in its own right. The stuffed rice version — a shell of soft cheese-enriched rice closed around a savory center — is a close relative of the Sicilian arancino and the Roman supplì, and versions of the technique had circulated in European kitchens long before this book. The oysters are the period marker. Cheap and abundant through the nineteenth century, they turn up in Victorian recipes as a background flavoring, minced into forcemeats and stuffings, the way anchovy or mushroom might be used now. Mace and nutmeg together, both from the same fruit, are often said to have been the usual warm seasoning for white meat and cream in this era, inherited from the older English kitchen.