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Lamb Croquettes
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup flour 1 cup stock 1 cup cold cooked lamb, cut in small cubes 2/3 cup boiled potato cubes Salt and pepper 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley Fry onion in butter five minutes, then remove onion. To butter add flour and stock, and cook two minutes. Add meat, potato, salt, and pepper. Simmer until meat and potato have absorbed sauce. Add parsley, and spread on a shallow dish to cool. Shape, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry in deep fat, and drain. Serve with Tomato Sauce.
A standard croquette formula: a very thick veloute binds cooked lamb and potato, the mixture is chilled until firm, then breaded and deep-fried. Nothing here is difficult, but the mixture must be genuinely cold before shaping.
- Chill it properlyThe instruction to "spread on a shallow dish to cool" is the hinge of the recipe. Spread the mixture no more than an inch deep and refrigerate at least two hours, or until firm enough to cut. Warm or soft mixture will burst in the fat.
- The sauce should be very thickA quarter cup of flour to one cup of stock is roughly double the usual proportion for a sauce, and deliberately so. Cook it until it pulls away from the pan; a loose binder gives croquettes that collapse.
- StockLamb or veal stock suits the dish best. Commercial beef broth is more assertive than the period's household stock; if you use it, dilute it or check the salt before adding any.
- OnionFrying the onion and then discarding it flavours the butter only. If you would rather keep the texture, mince it finely and leave it in.
- Breading orderCrumbs, then beaten egg, then crumbs again, as written. The first light coat of crumbs gives the egg something to grip on a damp mixture. Let the coated croquettes rest 15 minutes in the refrigerator before frying.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "deep fat" and gives no temperature. Modern practice for croquettes is around 375F: cooler fat soaks in and softens the crust; hotter fat colours before the centre has warmed through. One to two minutes is enough, since everything inside is already cooked.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Roughly two and a half cups of mixture, which should make something like six to eight croquettes of the usual cork or cylinder shape -- three or four servings as an entree with tomato sauce.
Croquettes were a common American answer to the Sunday roast's remains, and cookery schools of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries taught them as a system rather than a dish: a thick binding sauce, a cup or so of chopped cooked meat, a starch, a breading, hot fat. Fannie Farmer and her contemporaries printed variations for chicken, veal, salmon, sweetbreads, rice and hominy on the same template. The technique came from French kitchens, where croquette derives from croquer, to crunch. The dish occupies the place a cold-meat leftover was expected to fill on a middle-class table: dressed up, sauced, and served as though it had been planned.