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White Soup Stock
Mix ingredients in order given. Cool, shape, crumb, and fry same as other croquettes.
Chicken Croquettes I 1 3/4 cups chopped cold cooked fowl 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon celery salt Few grains cayenne 1 teaspoon lemon juice Few drops onion juice 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley 1 cup Thick White Sauce Mix ingredients in order given. Cool, shape, crumb, and fry same as other croquettes.
White meat of fowl absorbs more sauce than dark meat. This must be remembered if dark meat alone is used. Croquette mixtures should always be as soft as can be conveniently handled, when croquettes will be soft and creamy inside.
A classic croquette formula: cooked chicken bound with a very stiff white sauce, chilled firm, breaded and deep fried. Everything depends on the ratio of meat to sauce and on the mixture being thoroughly cold before shaping.
- Thick White SauceIn books of this period a "thick" white sauce for binding is roughly 4 tablespoons butter and 4 tablespoons flour to 1 cup milk — about twice the flour or more of a pouring sauce, and stiff when cold.
- The hinge: chill hardThe recipe says only "Cool", but the mixture wants to be spread out and chilled until cold and firm before shaping; a warm or soft-set mixture is much more likely to break open in the fat.
- Crumb means a three-stage coating"Crumb" here is fine dry breadcrumbs, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then crumbs again. Chill the coated croquettes another 30 minutes; a second coat on any thin spot is cheap insurance.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat at 375-390F, croquettes fully submerged, 2 to 3 minutes until deep gold. The filling is already cooked, so the fat only needs to set the crust and heat the centre.
- Onion juice and celery saltOnion juice is made by halving an onion and pressing it against a grater or reamer; a scant 1/4 teaspoon of grated onion substitutes. Celery salt is still sold, but check the salt content of your brand before adding the full 1/2 teaspoon of plain salt.
- White meat versus darkThe note about absorption is accurate and worth heeding: dark meat is moister and takes less sauce. Using thigh meat alone, start with about three-quarters of the sauce and add the rest only if the mixture will not hold a shape.
- YieldAbout 1 3/4 cups of meat with 1 cup of sauce makes 8 to 10 cork-shaped croquettes, serving four as a main course with a sauce or a green vegetable.
Croquettes were a fixture of American and English cookery schools from the 1880s through the 1920s, and this entry carries the marks of that teaching tradition: a numbered variant, a rule about the behaviour of an ingredient, and a general principle stated at the end. The point that a croquette mixture should be "as soft as can be conveniently handled" is the whole craft in one line — the cook is aiming for a crisp shell around something nearly liquid, which is why the chilling and the double crumbing matter more than the seasoning. Dishes like this also solved the practical problem of the roast fowl's second and third appearances at table in households where nothing cooked was thrown away.