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Kromeskies
Kromeskies are croquettes cooked in the Russian manner; they are made as follows. Mince the remains of any cold meat, fish, poultry, or shell-fish, as for croquettes; season them nicely, and shape them, as usual, like a cork. Instead of dipping them in egg, and afterwards in bread-crumbs, cut some slices of cold fat bacon (boiled) as thin as writing-paper; wrap the croquettes in these, dip each one in a little frying batter (see BATTER FOR FRYING), fry them in hot clarified fat, and when brown and crisp, arrange neatly on a hot dish; garnish with fried parsley, and serve immediately. Kromeskies may be made according to any of the recipes given for croquettes, and should be cooked as above. The following recipe will serve as a specimen.
A method rather than a fixed recipe: leftover meat bound into croquettes, jacketed in bacon and batter instead of egg and crumbs. A few points decide whether they hold together in the fat.
- The binding is everythingThe text assumes you already know the croquette method: the mince is bound with a very thick reduced bechamel or veloute (a panada), spread on a plate, and chilled solid before shaping. Warm or loosely bound mixture will burst the batter in the fryer.
- "Cold fat bacon (boiled)"Fat streaky bacon, simmered until cooked and then chilled so it slices cleanly. Modern thin-cut streaky bacon or pancetta, briefly simmered and cooled, does the same job; the point is a pliable, already-cooked wrapper that will not shrink violently and split the batter.
- "Thin as writing-paper"Genuinely thin, near-translucent slices. Anything thicker will curl and unwrap in the fat. Chilling the boiled bacon hard, or asking for it machine-sliced, is the practical route.
- Shaped "like a cork"A blunt cylinder, in practice something like 2 inches long and an inch across, roughly an ounce of mixture. The book gives no dimensions or yield.
- Frying batterThe cross-reference is to a separate frying-batter recipe, typically flour with water or milk, sometimes lightened with whisked egg white. It should coat the back of a spoon thickly; a thin batter slides off the bacon.
- Fat temperatureClarified beef dripping or lard was standard; any neutral oil works. Fry at 350-375F. Below that the batter absorbs fat and goes heavy, above it the outside colours before the chilled centre has warmed through.
- Fried parsleyThe parsley must be bone dry before it goes near the fat, or it will spit hard. A few seconds in the same fat, then drained on paper; it should stay green, not brown.
- Reheated leftoversSince the filling is already-cooked meat or fish, the aim in the fryer is to heat it through, not to cook it. Use leftovers that have been refrigerated promptly and are no more than a couple of days old, and serve straight from the pan.
The name is often traced to the Polish krokiety, though the derivation is traditional supposition rather than settled fact, and Victorian cookery writers who described the dish as a croquette "in the Russian manner" seem to have done so chiefly because of the bacon wrapper and batter coat rather than any documented Russian original. Its real home is the nineteenth-century English kitchen's preoccupation with rechauffe cookery: dishes engineered to bring cold joints, poultry and fish back to the table looking deliberate rather than leftover. Cassell's treats it as a template, not a single dish, offering the recipe that follows as a specimen, which is why the instruction is to follow any croquette recipe and simply change the coating. The bacon does double duty, adding fat to lean minced remains and sealing the panada so the batter has something firm to cling to.