Home › Entrées › Lobster Croquettes
Lobster Croquettes
2 cups chopped lobster meat salt, pepper and cayenne 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon parsley 2 hard-cooked egg yolks 1 cup Croquette Sauce Mix ingredients in order given; shape in croquette or chop form; dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs. Fry in deep fat. If in chop form, make incision and insert small lobster claw. Meat, Rice, and Tomato Croquettes 1 cup chopped meat salt, pepper and cayenne 1 cup hot rice lemon juice 1 cup Croquette Sauce made with onion juice tomato instead of milk Mix ingredients in order given; shape; dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs; fry in deep fat. ½ cup flour ½ teaspoon salt Fontage Cups or Timbale Cases 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 egg yolk cayenne 1 cup milk Mix ingredients in order given until smooth, strain, and let stand over night in a warm place. Heat fontage iron in hot fat, drain, dip in batter, place in hot fat, and fry until a delicate brown. Remove from iron, invert, and drain. These cups are used for all kinds of creamed mixtures and forcemeats, and are used instead of patty shells and croustades. 1
Three related recipes run together here, all built on the same principle: a very stiff white sauce used as binder. The success of all of them depends on that sauce being thick enough and the mixture cold enough to hold a shape.
- Croquette SauceA separate recipe in the book: essentially a panada-thick white sauce, far stiffer than a pouring sauce, cooked until it leaves the side of the pan. An ordinary pouring white sauce will not bind croquettes and they will burst in the fat.
- Chill before shapingThe instruction is missing but assumed. Spread the mixture on a plate, cool it thoroughly, and refrigerate at least two hours before forming; shaping warm mixture is the usual cause of failure.
- Frying temperatureThe book says only "deep fat," with no temperature; period cooks judged it by how fast a bread cube browned. In modern terms, fat around 375F and deep enough to float the croquettes works; fry two or three at a time so the temperature does not drop, about 2 minutes to a deep brown, and drain on paper.
- NutmegA full teaspoon of nutmeg in 2 cups of lobster is heavy by current taste. A quarter teaspoon, freshly grated, is closer to modern expectations.
- The claw garnishA slit cut in the fried croquette with a small claw tip pushed in, in the manner of the bone in a lamb chop. Purely decorative, and of a piece with the era's taste for moulded, disguised entrees.
- Meat, rice and tomato variant"Croquette Sauce made with tomato instead of milk" means substituting strained tomato purée or juice for the milk in the thick sauce. Cook it down well; watery tomato will slacken the binder.
- Fontage ironA long-handled iron mould, heated in the fat so the batter clings when dipped, then fried until the shell releases. Rosette irons and Scandinavian rosett/timbale irons work the same way and are the practical substitute.
- Batter left overnight in a warm placeDo not do this with a milk-and-egg batter. Rest it overnight in the refrigerator instead and bring it to room temperature before frying; the resting is for gluten and starch hydration, and warmth contributes nothing that cold time does not.
- YieldTwo cups of lobster with a cup of sauce makes about eight croquettes, enough for four as an entrée course.
Croquettes were the workhorse of the American middle-class entrée course from the 1880s through the 1920s: a thick sauce, a cup of chopped something, and a fryer turned leftovers or expensive shellfish stretched with binder into a dish that could be sent to table in moulded, uniform shapes. Lobster was the prestige version, and the trick of inserting a claw so the croquette read as a chop belongs to the same school of cooking that pressed food into timbales, borders and cases — form mattered as much as flavour. Lowney's Cook Book, compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, was one of many manufacturer-sponsored volumes that padded out a full general cookbook around the sponsor's product.