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Rice Croquettes
Cook one cup of rice in two cups of water or chicken stock in a double boiler until tender, and the liquid is absorbed. Season with salt, pepper and onion juice; add four tablespoons butter and two egg yolks.
Cool, form in croquettes, dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs, and fry in deep fat.
A short, capable recipe that leaves out the two things that decide whether croquettes hold together: how long the mixture chills and how hot the fat is. Both are worth pinning down.
- Chill hard, not just "cool"The rice paste holds its shape far better if it is refrigerated until firm, ideally several hours, before shaping. Croquettes formed from barely-warm rice are apt to split open in the fat.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "deep fat"; modern practice for croquettes is around 375F. Cooler and the crumb coat drinks oil before it sets; hotter and the outside colours before the centre is heated through. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- The rice mattersA starchy short- or medium-grain rice binds best. Long-grain rice stays separate and binds less readily, which is why the recipe cooks the rice in the double boiler until every drop of liquid is gone.
- Onion juiceAn old shortcut for onion flavour without pieces: grate an onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze it in a cloth. A teaspoon is plenty for this quantity. Finely grated onion works if you cook it soft in the butter first.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe first coat of crumbs dries the surface so the egg clings; skipping it is why the breading slides off. Beat the eggs with a tablespoon of water and use dry fine crumbs, not fresh.
- The yolks are raw when addedThe yolks -- they are stirred into the rice while it is still hot, which is hot enough to start setting them; the mixture is then cooled and deep fried, which heats the interior further.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice makes roughly ten to twelve cork-shaped croquettes, enough for four as an entrée course or six as a side with roast meat.
Croquettes were the mainstay of the American entrée course from the 1880s through the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period run to a dozen versions: chicken, lobster, sweetbread, veal, hominy, rice. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the form was promoted in the United States by cooking-school teachers, Fannie Farmer and Maria Parloa among them, who taught the crumb-egg-crumb coating still used today. A rice croquette was the cheap end of the range, a way to put a hot, crisp, individually moulded thing on a plate between the fish and the roast without touching expensive meat. Lowney's book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it padded out its chocolate recipes with a full general cookery section drawn from the standard repertoire of the day.