Home › Entrees › Oyster Croquettes
Oyster Croquettes
1 cup raw oysters 1 cup cooked veal 2 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons cracker crumbs 2 egg yolks 1 tablespoon onion juice Drain and clean the oysters, scald and strain the liquor; chop the oysters very fine, soak the cracker crumbs in the liquor, then mix all the ingredients and shape; dip in egg, roll in crumbs and fry as usual. Drain on brown paper.
A short, workable croquette that skips the usual white sauce and binds instead with cracker crumbs, egg yolk and finely chopped veal. The recipe assumes a good deal of knowledge on the cook's part, so a few gaps need filling.
- The hinge: chill before shapingWith only two egg yolks and three tablespoons of crumbs holding a cup of chopped oysters, the mixture is slack when warm. Refrigerate it an hour before forming, and chill the shaped croquettes again for 20 minutes after breading, or they will burst in the fat.
- "Fry as usual"The recipe gives no temperature; period cooks judged deep fat by how fast a bread cube browned, which corresponds to roughly 375F. Use enough fat for the croquettes to float, two or three minutes until deep gold. The oysters go in raw, so the frying has to cook the filling through as well as set the crust; a cooler pan means grease-soaked croquettes.
- Onion juiceGrate an onion on a fine rasp and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze grated onion in a cloth. A tablespoon takes roughly half a medium onion. Minced onion is not a substitute here as it will not soften in the brief frying.
- Scalding the liquorBringing the oyster liquor just to a simmer and straining it removes the grit and coagulated protein that would otherwise cloud the binding. Do not boil it hard; reduce the volume and the crumbs will not swell properly.
- Cooked vealA cup of leftover roast or braised veal, chopped fine, not ground to paste. Shoulder or breast are the likelier cuts to be left over from a period roast; cooked chicken thigh is the closest common stand-in.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs came from plain soda or water crackers, not seasoned crackers. Unsalted saltines crushed fine are the nearest match; adjust salt accordingly, as the oyster liquor is already salty and the recipe lists no salt at all.
- Brown paperGrocer's paper was the standard drain. Use a rack over a sheet pan instead, which keeps the crust from steaming on the underside.
- YieldAbout eight croquettes of two ounces each, enough for four as an entree course in the period sense or two as a main dish with a sauce. Serve hot; they do not hold.
Croquettes were everywhere in American cookbooks between about 1880 and 1930, a tidy way of turning small quantities of expensive protein and yesterday's roast into a dish that looked composed on a plate. The oyster-and-veal pairing sounds odd now but made good sense then: oysters were cheap and abundant along both coasts and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans, while veal was the mild, almost neutral meat that let the shellfish carry the flavor. Notably, this croquette uses no flour at all, unusual for the form, which normally leans on a flour-thickened white sauce to bind.