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Potato Croquettes
Ingredients.
Two pounds of Potatoes.
One ounce of Butter.
One tablespoonful of Milk.*
The page as printed gives only the ingredient list — the asterisk points to a footnote or a method given elsewhere in the book — so what follows is about making sense of those quantities rather than a step-by-step.
- The proportions are deliberately dryTwo pounds of potato bound with only an ounce of butter and a tablespoon of milk gives a stiff, almost pastry-like mixture. That is the point: a wet purée will burst its coating in the fat. Many period croquette recipes add beaten egg yolk as a binder, and it is worth adding if your potatoes are at all damp — though this ingredient list does not call for it.
- Choose the right potatoUse a floury, high-starch variety (russet, Maris Piper, King Edward) and bake or steam them rather than boiling in water, so they take up as little moisture as possible. Pass them through a ricer or sieve while hot; a food processor turns them to glue.
- One ounce of butterAbout 2 tablespoons, or 28 g. A tablespoon of milk in this period is close to the modern one, roughly 15 ml.
- CoatingThe page gives no method, but the usual sequence for croquettes of this kind is flour, beaten egg, then fine dry breadcrumbs, with deep fat rather than the oven. Chill the shaped croquettes for half an hour before they go anywhere near the pan.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat at 350-360F (175-180C). Cooler and the crumb soaks; hotter and the crust colours before the inside is hot. They need only two to three minutes, as everything inside is already cooked.
- YieldTwo pounds of potato makes roughly 12 to 16 cork-shaped croquettes, enough as a vegetable course or garnish for six.
Croquettes belong to the French professional repertoire that British "high class" cookery books were busy transplanting into private households: the name comes from croquer, to crunch, and describes the shell rather than the filling. The technique existed to give leftovers a second, more dignified appearance -- a croquette of potato, fish, veal or rice let a cook send up something crisp and shapely without a fresh joint. Croquettes of this kind are usually taken to have been served as an accompaniment rather than as an entrée in their own right — a plate of potato croquettes alongside roast game or a cutlet — though the manner of service in any particular household is a matter of inference. That such a book prints the ingredients as a bare list, trusting the reader to know the rest, suggests something about who these volumes were written for: readers presumed to have learned the method already, and to need only the proportions confirmed.