Roe Croquettes
Boil the roe as for frying; when cool, remove the skin and mash it with a fork. To 2 shadroes allow a half cupful of cream and a half cupful of thick stock. Rub together 1 tablespoonful of butter and 2 of flour, and add to the boiling cream and stock. Cook until it thickens, take it from the fire, and add the yolks of 2 well-beaten eggs, beating all together. Season with half a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne, 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice, and a little minced parsley. Add the shad-roe, mix well together, and when cool form into croquettes. Dip in beaten egg, then in fine cracker crumbs, and fry in hot fat. Serve with Hollandaise sauce.
A classic panada-bound croquette: the roe is cooked, mashed, and folded into a very thick cream sauce enriched with egg yolk. Everything depends on getting the mixture cold and stiff before it is shaped.
- Chill before shapingThe instruction to form the croquettes "when cool" means thoroughly cold, not merely off the heat. Spread the mixture in a shallow pan, cover, and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight; a warm mixture will slump and burst in the fat.
- "Boil the roe as for frying"This refers back to an earlier roe method in the book, which is not repeated here. Period practice was generally to parboil the sacs gently in salted (often acidulated) water rather than at a rolling boil, then cool them; hard boiling splits the membrane and the eggs scatter.
- Sourcing shad roeAmerican shad runs have been much reduced and some Atlantic states have closed their fisheries, so roe is seasonal and regional at best. Herring, mullet, or cod roe of similar weight can stand in, though the texture is not identical; a pair of shad roe sacs runs roughly 8-14 oz.
- Thick stock"Thick stock" here means a strong, well-reduced stock with enough gelatin to set in the icebox. A commercial carton broth will not set and the mixture will be slack; reduce it hard first.
- The roux is deliberately heavyOne tablespoon butter to two of flour is a dry, tight paste rather than an equal-parts roux, and it is meant to be. Add it in pieces to the simmering liquid and cook a full two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- Adding the yolksTake the pan off the heat before the yolks go in and beat them in quickly. If the mixture is still boiling the yolks scramble and the croquette interior turns grainy.
- Cracker crumbs and fryingFine cracker crumbs are plain crackers crushed fine; panko is a fair modern stand-in, though coarser. The recipe says only "hot fat"; in modern terms about 375F for two to three minutes, in batches, until deep gold. Any cooler and the crust soaks fat; any hotter and it colors before the center warms.
- YieldDepending on the size shaped, two roe sacs will make roughly ten to twelve croquettes, enough for three or four with the Hollandaise.
Shad roe held a peculiar place in nineteenth-century American cooking: shad ran up the Atlantic rivers in enormous numbers each spring, and the roe sacs, sold in pairs, were prized as a delicacy. Croquettes were a standard American answer to any cooked, flaked, or mashed food that needed stretching and dressing up, and cookbooks of this period offer them made from chicken, sweetbreads, rice, hominy, salmon, and lobster on the same panada principle seen here. The Hollandaise finish reflects the influence of French service on late-Victorian American household cooking, where a French sauce name signaled that a dish was fit for company. The recipe assumes the reader already knows the cross-referenced method for boiling roe.