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Cheese Croquettes
Mix two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese with one ounce of melted butter, add the beaten yolks of two eggs, and the beaten white of one; season with salt and cayenne. Cut out some small rounds of pastry, spread some of the mixture on one half, moisten the edges and press together. Egg and bread-crumb, and fry in boiling fat. Probable cost, 6d.
A Victorian savoury: little pastry turnovers filled with a cheese-and-egg paste, crumbed and deep-fried. The recipe assumes you already have pastry to hand and gives no yield, no fat temperature and no frying time.
- The hinge: seal them properlyThe filling is loose and expands as the egg sets, so the edges must be moistened and pressed firmly, ideally crimped with a fork. Any gap and the cheese will leak into the fat and burn.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously round the food, roughly 350-375F. At that heat the croquettes need about two to three minutes, turning once, until the crumb coat is deep gold.
- The pastryThe recipe says only "small rounds of pastry" and specifies neither type nor size. A short crust rolled thin and cut in rounds of about two inches suits the filling; ready-made shortcrust rolled to around 1/8 inch will do. Puff pastry is likely to blow open in the fat.
- Quantities and yieldTwo ounces of grated Parmesan is roughly two-thirds of a cup, one ounce of butter two tablespoons. The recipe gives no yield; the quantity of filling is small, so perhaps a dozen or so little croquettes.
- Egg and bread-crumbThis is the standard Victorian shorthand for a two-stage coating: dip in beaten egg, then press into fine dry white crumbs. Panko is coarser than what was meant but holds up better in the fryer.
- CayenneVictorian savouries of this kind were often seasoned more sharply with cayenne than a modern palate expects. A pinch is plenty here, with the salt kept light because Parmesan is already salty.
- ServingSavouries of this kind were generally sent to table very hot, often on a folded napkin, as the savoury course after the sweet. Drain on paper and serve within a few minutes; the cheese filling stiffens as it cools.
- "Probable cost, 6d."Sixpence for the whole dish, a costing convention Cassell applies throughout so a housekeeper could budget a menu. It reflects 1870s-90s prices and has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Cheese croquettes belong to the English savoury, the small hot, salty course served after the sweet at a Victorian dinner and largely unknown outside Britain. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery arranged its material alphabetically for reference rather than by menu, and printed a number of such trifles under headings like cheese, ramekins and fondues, many built on the same idea of grated hard cheese bound with egg and butter. The word croquette comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and by this period it covered almost anything bound, coated and fried; the fact that this version is really a small fried pastry turnover rather than a shaped paste shows how loosely the term was used. Parmesan was a common choice for these dishes, being imported hard, keeping well in a Victorian larder, and grating dry.