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Chicken Croquettes
½ pint cold chicken (cut fine) 1 tablespoon parsley (chopped fine) 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon pepper 1 tablespoon butter 2 tablespoons Five Roses flour ¼ pint milk Pepper and salt 1 egg Bread crumbs.
Mix the chicken with the parsley and season with salt and pepper. Make a sauce with 1 tablespoon butter, 2 of flour, Add the milk, also season to taste. Add the chicken mixture to this and make into rolls. Beat the egg and add 1 teaspoon water. Roll the croquettes in the egg, flour well and roll in sifted bread crumbs. Shape into cutlets by flattening with knife and fry in hot lard.
Not Breached-Not Blended
A classic thick-béchamel croquette: cooked chicken bound in a stiff white sauce, breaded and fried. The original leaves out the single step that decides whether it works.
- Chill the mixture firstThe recipe says to make the sauce, add the chicken and "make into rolls," but a warm binder will not hold a shape and the croquettes will burst in the fat. Spread the mixture in a shallow dish, refrigerate until firm — an hour or two, or overnight — then shape.
- Measuring meat by the pint½ pint of finely cut chicken is 1 cup by US measure, roughly 5 oz of picked meat, about what comes off one large breast or the usable meat of two thighs; the ¼ pint of milk is ½ cup. Note that the book is Canadian, so imperial measure may be intended, in which case ½ pint is 10 fl oz and ¼ pint 5 fl oz.
- The sauce is meant to be very thick1 tablespoon butter and 2 tablespoons flour to ½ cup milk gives a paste far stiffer than a pouring sauce. That is deliberate; it is the glue. Cook the roux a minute before adding the milk so it does not taste of raw flour, and stir until it pulls away from the pan.
- Breading orderAs written the sequence is egg, then flour, then crumbs, which is unusual. Flour first, then egg wash, then crumbs adheres more reliably. Whichever order you use, chill the coated croquettes another 20 minutes before frying.
- Frying fat and temperature'hot lard' means fat hot enough to brown briskly; modern practice for frying croquettes puts this around 375F. They are already cooked through, so you are only browning the crust, about 2 to 3 minutes. Fat too cool and they absorb grease and slump; too hot and the crumbs darken before the centre warms.
- Shape"Shape into cutlets" means flattened oval patties rather than the cone or cylinder usually associated with croquettes; the flat shape is easier to turn in a pan.
- YieldAbout six small croquettes, enough for two as a main dish or four as a first course. Cream sauce or green peas are common accompaniments in period recipes.
- The stray line"Not Breached-Not Blended" is advertising copy for the flour carried over from the original page. It is not an instruction.
Croquettes were the standard genteel answer to leftover roast fowl in North American kitchens from the 1880s through the 1930s: a cup of picked meat, a stiff white sauce to bind it, crumbs and hot fat, and a cold bird became a hot dish that looked deliberate. The technique is French in origin: croquette from croquer, to crunch. The Five Roses book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed to sell flour, which is why the two tablespoons in the sauce are specified by brand.