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Potato Croquettes
Bake half a dozen large potatoes (regents). When done enough, burst them open, and scoop out the contents with a spoon. Beat the pulp until it is quite smooth, then put it into a clean saucepan with the yolks of one or two eggs, a piece of butter the size of walnut, and a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Beat this mixture over a moderate fire, until it leaves the sides of the saucepan with the spoon, then spread it out on a dish and let it cool. Shape it into balls; dip these in beaten egg, then into bread-crumbs, and fry them in hot fat until they are equally and lightly browned. Let them drain before the fire, dish them on a hot napkin, and serve immediately. If liked, the potato paste can be shaped into the form of corks or pears, a little piece of parsley-stalk being stuck into them to imitate the stalk. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for a small dish.
A straightforward baked-potato croquette, and the method still works exactly as written. The two things that decide success are how dry the potato is and how firmly the paste is cooked down before shaping.
- RegentsThe Regent was a common Victorian potato variety, generally recommended as a mealy sort, and is long out of commerce. Any dry, mealy baking potato does the same job — russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. A waxy salad potato will give you a sticky paste that slumps in the fat.
- Bake, do not boilThe instruction to bake and scoop is the hinge of the recipe. Baking drives off moisture that boiling puts in, and a dry pulp is what lets the croquettes hold their shape without flour or extra binder.
- "Until it leaves the sides of the saucepan"This is the doneness cue and it matters more than any clock. Beat over medium heat until the mass pulls cleanly away from the pan and rides on the spoon in one mass, three to five minutes. Underdone paste will burst in the fryer.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons.
- Cool it properlySpread thin on a plate and leave until cold and firm; an hour in the refrigerator will do it. Warm paste is hard to shape and will not take crumbs neatly.
- Frying temperature"Hot fat" gives no number; the modern working range for deep-frying is about 350–375F. Below that the crumb absorbs grease; above it, the outside colours before the centre heats. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop.
- The hot napkinA folded linen cloth laid on the serving dish to absorb frying fat. A wire rack, or paper towels swapped for a warm plate at the last moment, does the same without the laundry.
- Yield and costThe recipe says only "sufficient for a small dish"; six large potatoes will give a modest quantity of walnut-sized croquettes. The "probable cost, 8d." is eightpence in pre-decimal currency, of purely historical interest.
Croquettes belong to the nineteenth-century professional repertoire that Cassell's was busy translating for the middle-class household: a cooked, seasoned, bound mixture, shaped, crumbed and deep-fried, the name coming from the French croquer, to crunch. Potato was the cheapest of the many possible fillings — the same technique carried leftover chicken, fish, rice or sweetbreads. The naming of a specific variety, the Regent, is a reminder of how closely Victorian cooks tracked potatoes: seedsmen's catalogues and household manuals of the period distinguished mealy sorts for baking and mashing from waxy ones for salads, distinctions largely lost to the modern supermarket's unnamed "baking potato". The final flourish, moulding the paste into corks or pears and fitting each with a parsley stalk, is dining-room presentation of a kind the period liked even on a cheap dish.