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Kromeskies of Oysters
Open carefully one dozen fresh oysters; beard them, and chop them small; then mince cold chicken or turkey very finely in equal quantities. Add three mushrooms cut into small pieces, the yolk of an egg, the oyster liquor, and a table-spoonful of cream. Stir the mixture over a slow fire until it is quite thick; then put it into a cool place for an hour, and when cold, roll it into croquettes the shape and size of small corks; fold thin fat bacon round these, dip them into a frying batter, and fry them in hot fat until they are crisp and brown. Serve piled in the centre of a hot dish, and garnish with fried parsley. Time, six or eight minutes to fry. Probable cost, about 3s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way of using up cold roast poultry, bound with oysters and wrapped in bacon before frying. The recipe assumes you know how to handle a deep pan of fat and gives no temperatures, so a few numbers help.
- Chill the mixture properlyThe hinge of the dish is a forcemeat stiff enough to roll. An hour in a cool larder is the Victorian minimum; two to three hours in the refrigerator is more reliable, and the mixture should be genuinely firm before you shape it or the kromeskies will burst in the fat.
- Cook the oysters brieflyThe oysters go into the pan already chopped and are only stirred until the egg yolk and cream thicken. No time is given, so judge by the mixture rather than the clock. Push it further and they turn to rubber; the second cooking happens in the fryer.
- BeardingThe beard is the dark frilled gill around the edge of the oyster. It is edible but tough and gritty in a fine mince, so trim it away with scissors and keep the liquor, which is part of the binding.
- Fat bacon"Thin fat bacon" means bacon with plenty of fat, cut very thin: streaky rashers or fat back. Pancetta sliced on a machine, or thinly cut streaky rashers stretched flat with the back of a knife, both work; thick modern rashers are unlikely to cook through in six minutes.
- Frying batterA plain coating batter, flour slaked with water, milk or beer, thick enough to cling. Dip the wrapped rolls one at a time and lower them in immediately, seam side down, so the bacon does not unwind.
- Fat temperatureNo heat is given. 350-375F is the working range: hot enough to set the batter at once, cool enough that the interior heats through in the stated six to eight minutes.
- Fried parsleyDry curly parsley sprigs dropped into the same fat for a few seconds, until they stop hissing and turn bright and brittle. Drain hard; wet parsley will spit violently.
- Yield and costA dozen oysters with an equal quantity of poultry makes a small quantity of forcemeat, which the book reckons sufficient for three or four persons. The "3s." is three shillings.
Kromeskies are the English spelling of the French cromesquis, itself generally traced to a Slavonic original — Polish or Russian — and the dish arrived in English kitchens through the French professional cooks who dominated grand-house cookery in the nineteenth century. What distinguishes a kromeski from an ordinary croquette is the wrapping: instead of egg and breadcrumbs, the cold forcemeat is bound in a sheet of fat bacon or calf's udder and then dipped in batter, which fries into a crisp shell while the bacon bastes the filling. That oysters were the enriching ingredient rather than the luxury one says a good deal about the period: for much of the century, before the Victorian beds were fished out and prices began to climb, oysters were plentiful enough to be used as padding for poultry rather than the other way round.