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Veal Croquettes
To a cup of minced veal or chicken, add a cup of fine breadcrumbs, moisten with a cup of hot water in which have been dissolved a chicken bouillon cube and a tablespoonful of softened granulated gelatin. Flavor with a tablespoonful of lemon juice, pepper, and onion if the flavor is liked. The bouillon cube being quite salt, you do not need extra salt. When the mixture is cold shape into small croquettes, and roll in nuts that have been put through the food chopper. Peanuts, walnuts, or browned, but not salted, almonds. For variety they may be rolled in chopped mint or parsley. Arrange on a platter, garnish with cress. Serve with salad.
An unfried croquette: the meat is bound with gelatin rather than a hot bechamel, chilled until firm, and served cold. Everything hinges on the set, so treat this as a molded dish rather than a fried one.
- Start with cooked meatThe recipe assumes leftover roast veal or boiled chicken, since nothing here ever meets heat again. Mince cooked meat fine — a food processor pulsed a few times, not pureed — and never use raw.
- The gelatinA tablespoon of granulated gelatin is roughly one 1/4-oz envelope. "Softened" means sprinkled over a few tablespoons of cold water and left five minutes to bloom before the hot bouillon goes in; added dry to hot liquid it will string.
- Chilling time"When the mixture is cold" means thoroughly set — at least 2 to 3 hours in the refrigerator, covered. A mixture that is merely cool will not hold a shape and will weep onto the platter.
- Bouillon and saltBouillon cubes are salty, and the instruction to add no salt still holds. Taste the mixture before chilling; if you use a low-sodium cube or homemade stock you will need to correct it.
- Breadcrumbs'Fine breadcrumbs' here are most likely dry crumbs rather than fresh, acting as the absorbent filler. Packaged plain crumbs work; panko is too coarse and will stay gritty.
- The nut coatingA food chopper produces a coarse, dry crumb. Pulse nuts in short bursts or chop by hand: run too long and the oil releases into a paste that will not adhere. Toast and cool almonds fully before chopping.
- Serving and yieldThe mixture is made from a cup each of meat, crumbs and liquid, so the number of small croquettes will depend on the size you shape. Coat them shortly before serving, or the nuts soften; keep refrigerated and return leftovers promptly.
- CressThe garnish called for is watercress or garden cress, sold as a bunch or as microgreens; either works, and its pepperiness is doing real work against a mild, cold meat.
A croquette in its older form is minced meat bound in a thick white sauce, breaded and deep-fried; here the binder is packaged granulated gelatin and a bouillon cube, and the crisp exterior is supplied by ground nuts instead of hot fat. Both shortcuts were products of the same commercial pantry: powdered gelatin was sold in convenient pre-measured envelopes, and cubed bouillon was a fixture of the American kitchen by the 1920s. The result is less a fried croquette than a cold meat mousse in croquette costume, and it reflects a period habit of adapting a familiar restaurant shape to whatever the icebox and the grocery shelf allowed.