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Chicken Croquettes
Cold chicken, chopped parsley, a little cream, grated crackers, lemon flavoring, salt and pepper. Cut chicken very fine and season with salt and pepper; add chopped parsley, moisten with cream sufficient to make past; mould in a wineglass with grated cracker or bread crumbs on outside. Fry quickly in hot lard. Brown lightly. Lemon flavoring can be added at will.--Mrs. G. P.
A nineteenth-century use-up-the-roast recipe written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing. Nothing here is dangerous; almost everything is unmeasured, so the proportions and the chilling step are what need attention.
- Working proportionsFor about 2 cups of finely chopped cooked chicken, allow 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, 1/2 teaspoon salt, a good grind of pepper, and cream added a tablespoon at a time — roughly 1/4 cup — until the mixture just holds together when squeezed. Too much cream and the croquettes will burst in the fat.
- "Grated crackers"Plain soda or water crackers, dried and crushed to crumbs. Unsalted saltines or matzo crackers give the same dry, sandy coating; commercial seasoned breadcrumbs are wrong in flavor here. A little of the crumb worked into the mixture itself helps it hold.
- Mould in a wineglassA period wineglass held roughly 2 fluid ounces, so each croquette is about 1/4 cup of mixture packed into the bowl of the glass and turned out as a small cone or cylinder. Any small cup or a 1/4-cup measure does the job.
- Chill before fryingThis is the hinge. A cream-bound croquette with no egg or panade is fragile; refrigerate the moulded shapes at least an hour, uncovered, before they meet the fat. Cold, dry croquettes hold their shape and take on a crisp crust.
- A firmer binder, if you want oneModern croquette practice binds with a stiff thick white sauce (2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1/2 cup milk or cream per 2 cups meat), cooked, cooled and mixed in, then a coat of beaten egg before the crumbs. Mrs. G. P.'s version is lighter and looser; the sauce version simply survives handling better.
- Fat and temperature"Fry quickly in hot lard" gives no temperature, and does not say whether the fat is deep or shallow; hot fat in the 365-375F range suits it. Below that the crumbs drink fat and the croquettes slump; above it they color before the inside warms through. Two to three minutes gives the light browning she asks for, since the chicken is already cooked.
- Lemon flavoringThis may well have meant a few drops of lemon extract, though the recipe does not say and juice or zest are equally possible. Grated zest from half a lemon is closer to what a modern palate expects and does not carry the alcoholic edge of extract.
- YieldTwo cups of chicken makes about eight croquettes — four servings as a lunch or supper dish, traditionally with a cream sauce, green peas, or nothing more than lemon wedges.
Croquettes were the respectable Victorian answer to leftover meat: chopped fine, bound, breaded and fried, they turned the remains of a roast fowl into something that could be sent to table in its own right. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (variously dated 1877, 1878 or 1879 in the bibliographic record), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housewives, is full of such economies, and the attribution "Mrs. G. P." is typical of the book's method rom who who wwho who whwho who owho who whowho who what who who owho who what."