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Fowl, with Rice Croquettes
Boil half a pound of rice in a quart of good broth, and let it simmer, afterwards adding two or three ounces of butter, until the liquid has evaporated, and the rice is left quite dry. When cold, mould into balls; insert a spoon, and press the rice in the middle, so as to form a hollow, which fill with minced fowl, moistened slightly with bechamel sauce. Close the opening with some more rice, and fry, dipping each ball into egg, and rolling it in bread-crumbs. When of a nice brown, serve with a garnish of fried parsley. Time, half an hour to boil rice; ten minutes to fry croquettes. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of fowl.
A Victorian way of using up cooked fowl, and one that still works if you keep the rice dry enough to hold a shape.
- The hinge: dry riceThe rice must absorb every drop of the broth and finish genuinely dry and sticky, not fluffy. Wet rice will not seal around the filling and the croquettes will burst in the fat. Spread it on a tray to cool completely, ideally several hours or overnight in the fridge.
- QuantitiesHalf a pound of rice is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons dry (roughly 225 g); the quart is an imperial one, two pints or about 1.1 litres — nearer five US cups than four. Short-grain or pudding rice gives the cohesion this needs far better than long-grain or basmati.
- Timing the riceHalf an hour of simmering suits an unwashed medium- or short-grain rice absorbing a full quart. Check at 20 minutes and add a splash of hot broth if it dries before the grains are tender.
- "Minced fowl"Cooked chicken, finely chopped rather than ground to paste — leftover roast or poached breast and thigh. Reckon on 8-10 oz for this quantity of rice.
- BechamelMake it thick, close to a panade, and use only enough to bind. A loose sauce turns molten in the fryer and forces its way out through the seam.
- FryingDeep-fry at around 350-360F. The recipe's ten minutes probably covers the whole batch fried in relays; each croquette needs only 3-4 minutes, until evenly browned, since everything inside is already cooked. Chill the shaped, crumbed balls for 20 minutes first so the coating sets.
- Fried parsleyCurly parsley, thoroughly dry, dropped into the hot fat for 15-20 seconds until it stiffens and turns dark green. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- YieldAbout 12 croquettes of golf-ball size, serving four as a light course with a green salad.
Croquettes belong to a French repertoire older than the nineteenth century — the word and the preparation are attested in French cookery well before 1800 — though their wholesale absorption into English cookery books is a nineteenth-century phenomenon, and Cassell's assumption that a household has cold fowl and a jug of bechamel already to hand tells you a good deal about how Victorian kitchens worked: the second-day dish was planned, not improvised. Rice croquettes with a hidden filling are close cousins of the Italian arancini and supplì, though the shared idea is generally traced to the older, wider practice of binding leftover grain and meat rather than to any single origin. The costing — 8d., excluding the fowl — is characteristic of the book, which priced dishes so that a cook could weigh one supper against another; the bird itself was the expensive part, and the point of the recipe was to make the last of it go round.