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Fish Croquettes
2 cups cold boiled fish 2 cups hot mashed potato 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 cup hot milk 1 egg 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon chopped parsley Pick the fish over carefully to remove skin and bone; mince fine; combine all the ingredients, mix thoroughly and let cool. When cold, form into balls, dip into beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, fry in hot fat. Drain on brown paper. For this rule shad roe may be used instead of fish. If canned salmon is used, substitute bread crumbs for the potatoes and an extra egg, omitting the milk.
A leftover-fish recipe from the era when Monday's dinner was built from Sunday's. The whole thing hinges on the mixture being cold and stiff before it is shaped.
- Chill properly"let cool" means exactly what the next line says, "when cold": the mixture must be cold and stiff before shaping. Warm or loose croquettes shed their coating and burst in the fat.
- Keep the potato dryTwo cups of mashed potato is the binder, not a side dish. Use a dry, floury potato mashed without extra cream or butter beyond the tablespoon called for, or the mixture will never hold a ball.
- Fry temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat" and gives no number; around 375F suits croquettes. Below that they soak; much above and the crumbs colour before the centre heats through. Two to three minutes, turning, is enough since everything inside is already cooked.
- Coating orderThe recipe dips in egg then crumbs. A light dusting of flour first, then egg, then crumbs, gives a coat that survives the fryer. Let the breaded balls sit 15 minutes in the refrigerator before frying.
- Brown paperGrocers' paper bags were the period drain. Use a wire rack set over a sheet pan, which keeps the underside crisp better than paper does.
- Shad roeShad roe was cheap and abundant in spring on the American east coast and is now scarce and expensive. Any cooked firm white fish, or leftover poached salmon, does the same job.
- The canned salmon variationRead it as written: bread crumbs replace the potato entirely, a second egg goes in, and the milk is left out. Start with about a cup of soft crumbs and add more only if the mixture will not hold.
- YieldFour cups of mixture gives roughly 12 to 16 croquettes, enough for four as a main course with a sauce. A plain cream sauce or a squeeze of lemon suits it; the original book assumed you knew that.
Croquettes were the backbone of the American entree course from the 1880s through the 1920s, a genteel way of serving yesterday's fish or fowl that owed its name and method to French kitchen practice, where croquette comes from croquer, to crunch. The dish depended on the deep-fat frying that a coal or early gas range made possible at home. The shad roe note dates the recipe: shad ran up eastern rivers in vast numbers each spring and the roe was common enough to be treated as an ordinary substitution rather than a delicacy, which is no longer true. The canned-salmon variation points the other way, toward the tinned goods that were transforming pantry cooking in the same decades.