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Cheese Croquettes
3 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup flour 2/3 cup milk 1 cup cheese cut in small pieces 1/2 cup grated cheese Salt and pepper Make with a white sauce, using the butter, flour and the milk. Add the grated cheese. As soon as the cheese melts remove from the fire, fold in pieces of cheese, and add the seasoning. Spread in a shallow pan, and cool. Cut into squares or strips, cover with a crumb mixture, and fry in deep fat.
A stiff cheese panade, chilled and fried — the same logic as croquetas de queso. Two things decide whether it works: the sauce has to be thick enough to set, and the fat has to be hot enough to brown the crumbs before the interior liquefies.
- The sauce is deliberately very thickThree tablespoons butter and a quarter cup flour to only two-thirds cup milk gives a paste, not a pouring sauce. Cook the roux a minute or two before adding the milk, then beat over heat until it pulls away from the pan in a mass.
- Chill properlyThe recipe says only "spread in a shallow pan, and cool." In practice that means chilling until genuinely firm, an hour or two at least and longer if you can, in a layer of roughly 3/4 inch. A warm or soft mixture is liable to burst in the fat.
- The two cheesesThe grated cheese melts into the sauce and was most likely a dry aged Cheddar or American "store cheese," though the recipe does not say. The cup cut in small pieces stays in identifiable pockets — keep those cubes small, about 1/4 inch, or they melt out through the crust.
- "A crumb mixture"The recipe does not explain the term. Period croquette recipes generally meant beaten egg thinned with a little water and dry breadcrumbs, sometimes with a preliminary dusting of flour. Egg helps seal the coating on a cheese filling. Chill the breaded pieces again for 20 minutes before frying.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe gives none; around 375F suits croquettes. Older books tested by browning a bread cube in about 40 seconds, which comes to much the same thing. Cooler fat and the cheese runs before the crust sets; hotter and the crumbs darken while the centre is still cold.
- Frying timeOne to two minutes, turning once, until deep gold. Fry in small batches; crowding drops the temperature and is the usual cause of leakage. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The quantity is small — perhaps a dozen to twenty pieces depending on how they are cut — enough for a light main dish with a tomato sauce or a green vegetable, or for appetizers.
Croquettes were a workhorse of American cookery schools from the 1880s onward: a thick white sauce bound almost anything into a shape that could be crumbed and fried, and the technique was taught as a general principle rather than a single dish. A cheese version of it reflects the period's reasoning about protein — cheese, eggs, nuts and legumes were grouped as things that could stand in the centre of a plate where meat usually sat, a concern that grew during the First World War food conservation campaigns when meatless days were promoted in American households. The recipe's assumption that a cook already knows what "a crumb mixture" is, and needs no instruction on testing fat, is typical of books written for readers expected to have learned the croquette method elsewhere.