Home › Meats › Croquettes of Odds and Ends
Croquettes of Odds and Ends
Remove skin and gristle from any cooked meat, using several kinds if on hand. Cold mashed potato, rice or other starchy vegetables may be used if handy but not more than onethird of the whole quantity. To each pint of food add 2/3 of a cupful of thick brown sauce (using 2 tablespoonfuls of flour to the cup of liquid). Add seasonings to suit and set away until cold. Form in small croquettes. Dip each in beaten egg, roll in fine dry crumbs. Fry in sufficient smoking hot fat to immerse the croquettes. When brown drain an instant on soft paper.
A frugal, formula-style recipe rather than a fixed one: the proportions are what matter, and everything else is whatever the icebox held. Get the sauce thick enough and the mixture cold enough and the croquettes will hold; skimp on either and they burst in the fat.
- The hinge: chill it hard"Set away until cold" means genuinely cold and firm, not merely cool — at least three or four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. A warm or soft mixture will split open in the fat and empty itself into the pan.
- A pint of foodThis is a volume measure of the chopped mixture, about 2 cups, which is roughly 1 lb of cooked meat plus additions. Depending on how small you form them, expect something in the region of eight to ten croquettes.
- Thick brown sauceThe recipe gives you one figure only: 2 tablespoons flour to the cup of liquid. Conventionally such a sauce would be a browned roux moistened with meat stock, though the recipe specifies neither. Two-thirds cup of it per pint of solids is a binder, not a gravy.
- Chop, do not grind to pasteCooked meat run through a modern food processor turns pasty and the croquettes go dense. Chop by hand or pulse briefly so there is still texture; a period meat grinder on the coarse plate gave much the same result.
- The one-third rulePotato, rice or other starch is capped at a third of the total for good reason. More than that and the flavour flattens into filler, and the interior turns gluey.
- Frying fat and temperature"Smoking hot" was a visual cue for lard or beef drippings. Use a neutral oil at 365–375F, deep enough to immerse the croquettes, and fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Breading that stays onDry the surface of each croquette before the egg, and use fine dry crumbs rather than fresh. A second pass of egg and crumbs on any thin spot is cheap insurance.
- Season assertively"Seasonings to suit" is doing a lot of work. Cooked leftover meat has already given up much of its savour: salt, pepper, a little grated onion, mustard, nutmeg or chopped parsley all belong here, tasted while the mixture is still warm.
- Reheat properlyFrying browns the outside fast but may leave the centre barely warm. Bring the croquettes to steaming hot through the middle — a few minutes in a 375F oven after frying if they are browning too quickly.
Croquettes were the great reconciler of nineteenth-century thrift and nineteenth-century ambition: a way of returning yesterday's cold roast to the table in a form that looked deliberate. The word comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the dish reached English and American kitchens through the same channels as professional French cookery.