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Macaroni, Croquettes Of
To a tea-cupful of boiled pipe macaroni add about two ounces of meat from a roast pheasant, partridge, hare, or any game, a slice of lean ham, a few mushrooms, or a truffle. Mince separately, and mix these ingredients together. Boil a breakfast-cupful of good white sauce until reduced to a quarter of a pint, then simmer in it for a few minutes a salt-spoonful of shallot, chopped fine, a salt-spoonful of sugar, and one of pepper and nutmeg, mixed; lastly, stir in two or three yolks of eggs, and, when these have set, the juice of half a lemon. This sauce may now be poured over the mince, mixed with it, and left to get cold, when egg-shaped balls may be made in a table-spoon, and completed by the hand. Fry with egg and bread-crumbs in boiling lard from eight to ten minutes. Serve with fried parsley as a garnish. Sufficient for a dish.
A leftovers dish dressed as an entrée: cold roast game, macaroni and a thick egg-bound sauce shaped into ovals and fried. Everything depends on getting the binding sauce stiff and the mixture properly cold before shaping.
- The hinge: a stiff, cold mixtureThe croquettes hold together only because the reduced sauce sets hard around the mince. Spread the mixed filling in a shallow tray and refrigerate at least four hours, ideally overnight, before shaping. A mixture that is merely cool will burst in the fat.
- Egg yolks off the boil"Stir in two or three yolks of eggs, and, when these have set" means thickening over gentle heat, not boiling. Take the reduced sauce off direct heat, beat the yolks in, and return it to low heat only until it coats the spoon heavily; if it simmers it will curdle and the binding is lost.
- Cup and spoon measuresA teacupful is about 3/4 cup; a breakfast-cupful is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz. A quarter of a pint here is the imperial quarter-pint, 5 fl oz, so the sauce is reduced by about half. A salt-spoonful is a quarter teaspoon.
- Pipe macaroniThe long tubular macaroni of the period. Any short tube pasta works; boil it fully soft rather than al dente, drain well, and chop it small so the croquettes bind rather than bristle.
- The gameTwo ounces of cooked meat from roast pheasant, partridge or hare. Leftover roast duck or dark chicken thigh meat stands in reasonably; the ham and mushrooms carry much of the savour in any case. Mince by hand or pulse briefly, and keep the textures separate as directed so nothing turns to paste.
- Frying time and temperatureEight to ten minutes is far too long for a croquette in properly hot fat. At 350-375F they colour deep gold in three to four minutes, which is all the already-cooked filling needs. Longer than that and the coating darkens while the sauce inside boils and splits the crust.
- CoatingEgg and fine dry crumbs; a second coat of egg and crumbs is worth the trouble on a sauce-bound filling. Chill the coated croquettes again for twenty minutes before they go into the fat.
- Fried parsleyUse dry, curly parsley in small sprigs and fry only ten to twenty seconds in the same fat. Wet parsley will spit violently; shake it out in a cloth first.
- Yield"Sufficient for a dish" is the book's own phrase and fixes no number. The balls are shaped in a table-spoon, so the quantities given will make a single dish of small croquettes; count and covers are not stated.
Croquettes came into British cookery from France, where the name derives from croquer, to crunch, and by the later nineteenth century they were a standard device for turning cold roast meat into something presentable enough for a dinner course. Cassell's gives the entry as "Macaroni, Croquettes Of", under macaroni: a pheasant or hare produced more meat than a household ate at one sitting, and a rich good white sauce bound the scraps with macaroni into a second, quite different dish. The seasoning mdash; shallot, sugar, nutmeg, lemon mdash; belongs to a tradition of forcemeat flavouring often said to be older than the Victorian period. Frying in lard was the norm in kitchens with no thermometer; cooks judged the fat by the haze and the sound, which may be one reason printed times of the period can seem generous.