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Macaroni Croquettes
To 1 teacupful of boiled pipe macaroni add about 2 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 1/4 of a pint, then simmer in it for a few minutes 1 saltspoonful of shallot, chopped fine, 1 saltspoonful of sugar, and 1 of pepper and nutmeg, mixed; lastly, stir in 2 or 3 yolks of eggs, and, when these have set, the juice of 1/2 lemon. This sauce may now be thrown over the mince, mixed with it, and left to get cold, when egg-shaped balls may be made in a tablespoon, 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.
A Victorian way of using up cold game, bound with a very rich reduced sauce. The whole thing turns on the mixture being chilled hard before it is shaped, and on frying it far more briefly than the original says.
- Chill it properlyThe bound mince must be spread out and refrigerated until firm — two hours at least, overnight is better. A soft mixture will burst its crust in the fat and empty itself into the pan.
- Fry three to four minutes, not eight to tenEverything inside is already cooked; the frying only crisps the crumb and heats the centre. At 350–375°F egg-shaped croquettes brown in three or four minutes. Ten minutes gives a dark, oil-logged shell and a curdled interior.
- The old measuresA teacupful is roughly 5–6 fl oz (about ⅔ cup); a breakfast-cupful is 8–10 fl oz. A saltspoonful is ¼ teaspoon. A quarter of a pint here is the imperial one, so about ⅔ cup of finished sauce — thick enough to coat a spoon heavily.
- Adding the yolksTake the reduced sauce off direct heat before the yolks go in, or they scramble. Stir them through and return to gentle heat only until the sauce visibly thickens, then add the lemon juice off the heat — acid into a hot yolk sauce will split it.
- Pipe macaroniPlain hollow tubes, what we now sell as ziti or bucatini cut short. Cook it a shade past al dente, since it is chopped and will not soften further, and cut it into short lengths before mincing.
- The gameTwo ounces of cold roast pheasant, partridge or hare is the point of the dish, but any cooked dark poultry works — duck legs, or roast chicken thigh. The ham and mushroom or truffle are there for salt and depth; do not leave both out.
- Frying fatLard is still good for this and gives a clean flavour, but any neutral oil with a high smoke point serves. You need enough depth for the croquettes to float free rather than sit on the pan bottom.
- Breading and yieldFlour lightly, then egg, then fine dry crumbs; a second pass through egg and crumbs makes a sturdier shell. The quantities should give somewhere around a dozen croquettes — a first course for four, or a light supper for two with a salad.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly before they go near hot fat, and give them only a few seconds. Wet parsley spits violently.