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Tomato Croquettes
Mix two cups tomato, four cloves, two slices onion, two peppercorns, one half teaspoon salt and one fourth teaspoon paprika. Cook ten minutes and press through a sieve. Melt three tablespoons butter; add one fourth cup cornstarch and strained tomato mixture; boil ten minutes. Cool slightly, add one egg, pour into buttered pan, chill, cut in squares, dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs, fry in deep fat. Drain on brown paper. Serve.
CHAPTER X
A panada-style croquette: tomato purée bound stiff with cornstarch, chilled until sliceable, then breaded and deep-fried. The whole thing hinges on the paste being firm enough to cut cleanly.
- The tomato"Two cups tomato" in an American book of this period usually indicates canned or stewed tomato with its juice rather than fresh diced, though the recipe does not specify. Canned crushed tomatoes work directly; if using fresh, peel and chop about 1 1/4 lb.
- Cook the starch outThe instruction to boil ten minutes after adding cornstarch is not padding. A quarter cup of starch to two cups of thin purée needs sustained heat to gelatinize fully and lose its raw, chalky taste. Stir constantly with a flat-edged spoon; it will be very thick and will spit.
- Tempering the egg"Cool slightly" matters. Add the beaten egg to a paste still near boiling and it scrambles into visible threads. Let the mixture stand off the heat a few minutes to drop below scrambling temperature, then beat the egg in quickly.
- Pan and chillingSpread the paste about 1/2 inch deep in a buttered pan; this quantity fills an 8-inch square only shallowly, so use a smaller pan if you want thicker squares. Chill until firm right through, several hours or overnight; a warm centre will burst in the fat.
- Breading order"Dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs" is deliberate and correct: the first dry coat gives the egg something to grip on a moist, sticky surface. Skipping it is the usual reason croquettes leak.
- Frying fatDeep fat here means lard or a neutral oil at 375–385F. These are already cooked through, so they need only 1 to 2 minutes to colour. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- DrainingBrown paper was the standard drain; a wire rack set over a sheet pan is better, as paper traps steam and softens the crust underneath.
- Whole spicesThe cloves, peppercorns and onion are strained out with the seeds and skins, so leave them whole. Ground clove in this quantity would dominate.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 squares, enough for four to six as a side or a light entrée course.
Croquettes of this kind belong to the era when American cookery schools had absorbed the French *panade* — a stiff starch-and-butter paste used to bind chopped meat, fish or vegetables into shapes for frying. By the 1900s the technique had been pushed well past meat: rice, hominy, chestnut and tomato croquettes all appear in the entrée chapters of household manuals, since an entrée was then understood as a small made dish served between heavier courses rather than the main event. This one is essentially a fried tomato sauce, and it shows how far cooks would go to give a vegetable the form and handling of a meat dish. Lowney's own book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, which explains the heavy chocolate representation elsewhere in the volume; the general-cookery chapters give the impression of the Boston Cooking School style, down to the brown paper for draining, though the lineage is not documented.