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Mutton à la Marquise
Chop fine cold cooked mutton and mix it with an equal quantity of cold boiled rice. Season with salt, pepper, a little onion juice, chopped parsley and curry powder and moisten with I or more beaten eggs according to quantity. Mold in balls or croquettes, dip each in beaten egg, roll in fine crumbs and fry brown in deep, smoking hot fat.
A leftovers croquette that depends entirely on getting the binding right; too little egg and the balls burst in the fat, too much and they go pasty.
- ProportionsEqual quantities of chopped meat and cooked rice; the original does not say whether by weight or by volume. The egg is left open in the recipe itself: "1 or more beaten eggs according to quantity."
- Chop, don't grind"Chop fine" means knife-cut to the size of rice grains, not pushed through a food processor. Ground mutton turns to paste and the croquettes lose their texture.
- Onion juiceA period shortcut for onion flavour without pieces: grate half an onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze it in a cloth. A teaspoon is plenty. Grated onion works if you don't mind the texture.
- Curry powderCommercial blends of the period tended to be mild and heavy on turmeric and coriander. A teaspoon is a reasonable starting point for this quantity; season and taste the meat and rice before the egg goes in, and adjust after frying a single trial ball.
- Chill before shapingNot in the original, but the single thing that most improves the result. An hour in the refrigerator firms the mixture so the balls hold and the crumb coat sticks.
- Fat temperature"Deep, smoking hot fat" was judged by eye; the recipe does not say what fat, though lard or beef drippings would be the likely choices. A thermometer at 365-375F answers to it. Anything cooler and the croquettes absorb fat; hotter and the crumbs darken before the centre heats through.
- They are already cookedEverything inside is cooked meat, cooked rice and egg, so you are only browning the crust and setting the binder. Two to three minutes, turning once, and drain on paper.
- If you have no muttonLamb shoulder or leg from a roast will do in its place. Mutton is older sheep and stronger in flavour, which the curry powder may help to temper.
"À la Marquise" was one of many borrowed French titles that English-language household cookery applied to thoroughly domestic food; it carried a suggestion of refinement rather than pointing to one fixed technique, and cookbooks attached it to a wide range of dishes, from potatoes to puddings. What this recipe actually is, is a leftovers dish: the Monday use for Sunday's joint, extended with rice and seasoned with curry powder, which by the later nineteenth century was widely sold ready-blended in Britain and America. The croquette was a workhorse of thrift cookery, a way of turning cold scraps into something that arrived at the table looking deliberate, and dressing economy in a French name is a long-standing habit of the genre.