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Spaghetti Croquettes
1/4 pound spaghetti 3 ounces of bread crumbs 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper 1 pint of boiling water 1/4 pound grated cheese 1/2 teaspoon curry powder 1 tablespoon of butter 1 teaspoon of onion juice Break and cook the spaghetti in quickly boiling water, stir till thick, add the cheese, butter and curry and cook three or four minutes; add the seasoning. Pour on a flat dish to cool, mold into croquettes, crumb them, and fry in deep oil or butter till a golden brown. Serve hot.
A risotto-method pasta bound by its own starch, then chilled, shaped and fried. The whole thing hinges on cooking the spaghetti in just a pint of water so nothing is drained away.
- The absorption methodA pint of water to 1/4 lb spaghetti is deliberately stingy — the pasta drinks nearly all of it and the remainder turns to a starch paste that binds the croquettes. Stir often and keep the heat moderate so the bottom does not scorch before the water is gone.
- Break it short"Break and cook" means snapping the strands before boiling; the recipe does not say how short. Shorter pieces bind into a croquette more readily than full-length strands.
- The ambiguous seasoning"1 teaspoon of salt and pepper" is unclear in the original; read it as a teaspoon of salt plus pepper to taste. A full teaspoon of pepper in this quantity would be overwhelming.
- The cheeseGrated cheese by weight in recipes of this sort usually implies a hard, dry grating cheese such as Parmesan or a well-aged Cheddar, though the recipe does not specify. 1/4 lb is roughly a cup grated, and it helps bind the mixture as it cools.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve; a teaspoon takes about that much. Bottled onion powder is not the same thing and will read as dusty here.
- The breadcrumbs are the coatingThe 3 ounces of crumbs never go into the mixture — they are for the "crumb them" step. The recipe gives no egg wash, so press the crumbs on firmly and chill the shaped croquettes another 20 minutes; an egg-and-crumb coating holds better if you want insurance.
- Cool it properly"Pour on a flat dish to cool" means a shallow pan, spread no more than an inch deep, and left until firm — about an hour in the refrigerator. Warm mixture will slump apart in the fat.
- FryingDeep fat at 375F, in small batches, two to three minutes to golden brown. Butter alone will burn well below that temperature; use oil, or clarified butter if you want the flavor.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities are modest — roughly eight small croquettes, enough for two as a main course or four as a side.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in the English-speaking world in periods when meat was expensive, rationed or the subject of voluntary "meatless day" campaigns, and this book's "Meat Substitutes" chapter is exactly the sort of section such volumes led with. The croquette was the workhorse of that project: any starchy, well-seasoned mixture could be bound, chilled, breaded and fried into something that arrived at the table with the shape and browned crust of a cutlet. Cheese did the nutritional argument — it was a standard protein stand-in of the period, and home economists are often said to have promoted it as a match for beef. The curry powder is a small period signature too: by 1900 a tin of commercial curry powder was an ordinary Anglo-American pantry item, used less to make Indian food than as a general savory seasoning for eggs, cheese and anything bland enough to need rescuing.