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Salmon Croquettes (Other fish is made into)
-Salmon or other fish is made into croquettes, by mixing the cooked fish, hot mashed potatoes, the yolks of eggs, and bread-crumbs or pulver ized cracker together. Form them into tasty shapes, dip into egg, dredge them with cracker dust and fry in boiling lard.
A skeleton recipe of the kind common in turn-of-the-century books: it names the components and trusts the cook to judge quantities. A few decisions have to be made before you start.
- Proportions are not givenThe original specifies no amounts at all. A workable ratio is roughly equal volumes of flaked cooked fish and mashed potato, bound with one egg yolk and a few tablespoons of crumbs per pound of mixture. Too much potato makes them pasty; too little and they collapse in the fat.
- "Boiling lard" is 375F"Boiling lard" is not a temperature -- Lard does not boil at frying temperature; the phrase is the period's conventional way of describing fat hot enough to bubble as moisture escapes the food. Around 375F works well; below about 350F the croquettes absorb grease, and lard's smoke point is low enough (roughly 370-400F depending on how it was rendered) that it will begin to break down if pushed much hotter. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works in its place.
- Chill before fryingA warm, freshly mixed croquette is much more likely to break apart in the fat. Shape them, then refrigerate at least an hour so the potato starch sets and the coating adheres.
- Cracker dustPulverized cracker meant plain soda or water crackers crushed fine, not a seasoned cracker. Commercial cracker meal is still sold and is the closest match; fine dry unseasoned breadcrumbs are an acceptable substitute.
- Egg wash"Dip into egg" means a whole egg beaten loose. Thinning it with a spoonful of water or milk makes it easier to get a thin, even coat.
- The fishCanned salmon was cheap and widely available in this period and is a likely intention; drain it well and pick out skin and vertebrae. The recipe's "cooked fish" equally suits leftover poached or baked salmon, cod, haddock or hake, so long as it is drained dry.
- SeasoningNone is listed, which was normal shorthand. Salt, pepper, a little grated onion or lemon, and parsley all belong here — mashed potato and canned fish are flat without them.
- Yield and servingA pound of fish with an equal volume of potato should give roughly a dozen croquettes, serving four. Drain on paper and serve hot with a plain white or egg sauce.
The croquette entered American home cooking from French practice, where croquette — from croquer, to crunch — described any bound, breaded, deep-fried mixture, and it became a fixture of the late nineteenth-century kitchen for the plainest of reasons: it turned yesterday's fish and potatoes into something that looked like a made dish. That salmon leads the entry is often linked to the canning boom on the Columbia River and in Alaska from the 1870s onward, which put tinned salmon into inland pantries at a price ordinary households could meet. The instruction to "form them into tasty shapes" is characteristic of the period's cookbooks, where the conventional cone, cylinder and pear forms were familiar enough to need little explanation — though many period books did describe or illustrate them.