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Parmentier Croquettes
Put some mashed potatoes in a stewpan with a small piece of butter, when hot add enough cream to make it the consistency of a thick batter, and a table-spoonful of chopped parsley. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg; lastly, stir in one or two yolks of eggs, and allow to bind. Spread the mixture on a dish, when cold shape into small balls, egg and bread-crumb them, and fry in boiling fat to a light golden brown.
A straightforward potato croquette; the whole thing hinges on getting the mixture dry and stiff enough to hold its shape in the fat.
- Keep the mash dryUse floury potatoes (russet, Maris Piper), baked or boiled whole in their skins and riced while hot so they steam dry. Waterlogged mash will not bind and the croquettes burst in the fryer.
- "Consistency of a thick batter" is misleading"Consistency of a thick batter" -- Err on the dry side: a couple of tablespoons of cream per pound of potato is usually enough, and the mixture is easier to shape if it will hold a furrow from the spoon. It slackens further as the egg yolk goes in and only firms up again on chilling.
- "Allow to bind"Stir the yolks in off direct heat or over the lowest flame and keep the mixture moving for a minute or two until it thickens and pulls away from the pan in one mass. Let it boil and the yolk scrambles into visible flecks.
- Chilling is not optionalSpread the mixture no more than an inch deep and refrigerate at least two hours, ideally overnight. "When cold" in the original means properly cold and set, not merely off the heat.
- Egg and crumbFlour, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then fine dry breadcrumbs. A second coat of egg and crumb on the chilled croquettes is cheap insurance against splitting.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil in any useful sense; it smokes and breaks down first. The phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously when the food goes in, which modern practice generally puts at about 350-375F. Below that they absorb grease, above it the crust colours before the centre warms through.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a scant pinch per pound. Pre-ground nutmeg in the quantity the word "little" invites will dominate the parsley.
- YieldA pound of potato with one yolk gives roughly a dozen walnut-sized balls, enough for four as a side dish. Fry in batches of five or six so the fat holds its temperature.
The name honours Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813), the French pharmacist and agronomist who spent much of his career persuading a suspicious public that the potato was fit for people rather than only for livestock; in French kitchen usage "Parmentier" attached itself to almost any dish built on potato, from hachis Parmentier to potage Parmentier. The croquette was taught as a method: a stiff panada or puree bound with egg yolk, chilled, shaped, breaded and fried, a template that served equally for chicken, rice, fish or sweetbreads. That flexibility is why late-Victorian and Edwardian household books return to it so often - croquettes were the respectable way to bring yesterday's mashed potatoes back to the table as something that looked deliberate.