Home › Entrées › Three Eggs (Mix all this into the sauce)
Three Eggs (Mix all this into the sauce)
دو وو وو Mix all this into the sauce; stir in, when over the fire, the yolks of three eggs. Let this thicken, pour out on a dish, and when cold make up into croquet shapes. Egg and bread-crumb, and fry them a nice brown in boiling lard or fat. These should be dished on a napkin, served with parsley fried; or they can be made into cutlet shape, and served with brown sauce, and peas or macédoine in the centre.
This is the closing half of a croquette recipe — the opening line, with its meat or fish and its quantity of sauce, has been lost to the scanner, which is why the page begins with a row of nonsense characters. What survives is the method, and the method is the part worth having.
- What the missing base wasThe lost opening almost certainly named a cooked meat or fish — chicken, veal, sweetbreads, game — minced fine and bound with a thick bechamel or veloute. Comparable croquette recipes use enough sauce only to hold the meat together; a very stiff mixture is what makes it cuttable when cold. The exact quantities here are guesswork.
- The hinge: the yolks must not boilThree yolks stirred into hot sauce over direct heat will scramble in seconds. Pull the pan to the side, stir the yolks in off the boil, and return it only long enough to thicken visibly. Once it catches, the croquettes will be grainy and no amount of chilling will fix them.
- "When cold" means properly coldSpread the mixture no more than an inch deep on an oiled tray and refrigerate at least three hours, or overnight. A warm or merely cool panada will burst in the fat. The Victorian cook set it in a larder; the fridge does it faster and better.
- Egg and bread-crumbFlour first, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs, and a second coat of egg and crumbs on the seams if you want insurance. Chill the coated croquettes another 30 minutes before frying.
- "Boiling lard or fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fully hot, around 350–375F. Below that the crumb soaks; above it the outside colours before the inside is hot. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Fried parsleyVery dry sprigs, 10–15 seconds in the same fat, drained on paper. Wet parsley will spit violently. It goes limp within minutes, so fry it last.
- Napkin and macédoineDishing "on a napkin" is the period way of absorbing grease at table — a folded linen cloth on the platter. A macédoine is a small dice of mixed cooked vegetables, usually carrot, turnip, French beans and peas, dressed in butter.
- YieldIf the base was around a pound of meat with half a pint of sauce, that would give roughly twelve croquettes, enough for four to six as an entree — but the original quantities are lost, so this is an estimate only.
Croquettes belong to the great nineteenth-century economy of the professional kitchen: the second life of yesterday's roast, chicken carcass or poached fish, minced fine, bound with a heavy sauce and made new by frying. The word comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the dish appears in English cookery books with increasing frequency from the middle of the century onward as French service took hold in country houses and clubs. Its place in the entrees chapter is telling — an entree in this period was a made dish served between the fish and the roast, small, sauced, and intended to show technique rather than abundance. The recipe also offers an alternative shaping: cutlet form with brown sauce and peas or macedoine in the centre.