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Croquettes
1 pint of white soup beans, 1 tablespoonful of vinegar, 1 tablespoonful of molasses, 1 tablespoonful of butter, Salt and cayenne to taste.
Boil the beans as directed in preceding recipe. When done, drain and press the beans through a colander, then add the other ingredients, mix well and stand away to
A plain bean paste seasoned in the Boston manner, meant to be chilled, shaped, crumbed and fried. The text breaks off mid-sentence, so the last third of the method has to be reconstructed from ordinary croquette practice of the period.
- A pint of beansDry beans were measured by volume, not weight: a pint is 2 cups, roughly 14-16 oz, yielding about 5-6 cups cooked. Depending on how large they are shaped, that is somewhere in the region of a dozen and a half croquettes.
- White soup beansA generic term for any small white dried bean sold for soup: navy (also sold as pea bean) or great northern. Any of them works.
- The missing instructionThe recipe ends at "stand away to" - almost certainly "to cool" or "to become cold." The mixture must be thoroughly chilled and firm before shaping, or the croquettes collapse in the fat. Several hours in the refrigerator, or overnight.
- Consistency is the hingeDrain the beans hard and let the purée dry out over low heat if it looks loose. A wet paste will not hold a shape no matter how long it chills; it should be stiff enough to stand in a spoon.
- Coating and fryingPeriod croquettes were rolled in fine crumbs, dipped in beaten egg, crumbed again, and fried in deep fat. Cooks of the day judged the fat by how fast a cube of bread browned in it; for an already-cooked filling this corresponds to somewhere around 365F. Two to three minutes, until deep brown, is all they need; the filling is already cooked.
- The seasoningA single tablespoon each of vinegar and molasses across a pint of beans is restrained. Taste the warm purée and adjust before chilling, since cold food reads as blander than hot.
- CayenneNineteenth-century cayenne varied a good deal in strength and purity compared with the modern ground product. Start with a scant eighth of a teaspoon.
- Oven alternativeIf deep frying is not wanted, the shaped and crumbed croquettes brown adequately in a hot oven, 425F, on an oiled sheet, turned once. The texture is drier than the original intends.
Croquettes - from the French croquer, to crunch - were everywhere in American and British cookery between roughly 1870 and 1930, because they solved two problems at once: they used up cooked leftovers and they turned cheap material into something that could be sent to table in a shape. Vegetable and bean croquettes had a particular place in the vegetarian and health-reform cooking of the period, when dried legumes were promoted, on the nutritional understanding of the day, as a direct substitute for meat. The seasoning here is telling: the molasses and butter gesture loosely towards the New England bean pot, here reworked into a French form.