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Chicken Croquette
Take the white and dark of a nicely roasted or boiled chicken, chop fine and season with pepper and salt; moisten it a little with its own gravy and form it into oval balls, dip them into a well beaten egg and then roll them in cracker crumbs and fry in boiling hot butter. Serve on a hot platter and ornament the dish with sprigs of parsley.
A simple use for leftover roast or boiled chicken. The one thing the original leaves out is the binder, and that is what decides whether the croquettes hold together.
- Bind it properlyGravy alone rarely holds chopped chicken in shape. Moisten with a stiff, cold white sauce (2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, 3/4 cup stock or milk per 2 cups minced chicken), then chill the mixture until firm before shaping. Warm, loose mixture bursts in the fat.
- Chop, do not grind"Chop fine" means knife-fine, not a food processor puree. A pulsed machine turns the meat pasty; hand-chopped chicken keeps its texture.
- "Boiling hot butter"Butter alone scorches at frying temperature. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, holds up better. Aim for 350-375F and enough depth to come halfway up the croquettes, turning once.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs came from plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine and dry. Unsalted saltines or dry breadcrumbs both work; panko gives a coarser crust than intended.
- Double coatingFor a crust that will not split, crumb, then egg, then crumb again, and rest the coated croquettes 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator before frying.
- Yield and servingTwo cups of minced chicken should make roughly eight croquettes, enough for four at supper. Serve hot with the remaining gravy or a cream sauce alongside; the parsley garnish the recipe calls for is still the right note.
Croquettes belong to the nineteenth-century household economy of the second appearance: a roast bird went to table whole one day and came back minced, crumbed and fried the next. The name is French, from croquer, to crunch, and the form reached American and British cookery books by way of French professional practice. Domestic writers of the 1870s-1900s reproduced it constantly. Recipes of this era often seem to assume the cook already knows to bind the mixture with sauce and chill it, which may be why no binder is specified here.