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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 1 or 2 eggs, a piece of butter the size of a 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. Sufficient for a small dish.
A baked-potato croquette rather than a boiled one, which is the whole point: the drier pulp binds with almost no flour and fries without collapsing. Nothing here needs updating except the units and the frying temperature.
- RegentsAn old floury English maincrop variety, long out of commerce. Any dry, mealy baking potato works -- russet, King Edward, Maris Piper. Waxy potatoes will give a gluey paste that slumps in the fat.
- Bake, do not boilBaking drives off moisture; the recipe depends on it. Bake at 400F until fully soft, roughly an hour for large potatoes, and scoop the flesh while it is still steaming so the steam escapes rather than condensing back into the pulp.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. Egg yolks are the real binder -- start with one for six potatoes and add the second only if the mixture will not hold a shape.
- Moderate fireOn a modern hob this is medium-low. You are drying the paste, not cooking the egg hard, and it should be stirred constantly until it pulls cleanly from the pan sides.
- Chill before shaping"Let it cool" is worth taking further than the text implies. Spread it thin, refrigerate until cold and firm, then shape and crumb. Warm paste absorbs fat and splits in the pan.
- Frying fat350-375F, deep enough for the croquettes to float. Lower and they soak; hotter and the crumb browns before the centre heats through. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Draining on a napkinA folded linen cloth on the serving dish absorbed fat and kept the croquettes crisp. A rack over a warm tray does the same job with less laundry.
- YieldThe recipe claims only that six large potatoes are 'sufficient for a small dish'; it gives no count of croquettes and no number of eaters.
Croquettes were established in English cookery from French practice, becoming common in the nineteenth century; the name comes from croquer, to crunch, and the form was applied to almost any bound, crumbed and fried mixture: rice, fish, chicken, sweetbreads, potato. Potato versions were popular in part because they used up cooked potato and looked more expensive than they were, which suits a household compendium like this one. The instruction to model the paste into corks and pears, with a parsley stalk pushed in for the fruit stem, belongs to a period when a vegetable dish was expected to be shaped and garnished as deliberately as a pastry; comparable books shape mashed potato into rosettes, borders and baskets. The specifying of a named potato variety is also of its time, when greengrocers and gardeners sold by variety.