Home › New Year Dinners › Chicken Croquettes No. 2
Chicken Croquettes No. 2
1 cup cold cooked chicken 1/2 can mushrooms 2 tablespoons shortening 3 tablespoons flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1/2 cup chicken stock 1/4 cup mushroom liquor 1/4 cup cream Chop chicken and mushrooms fine. Melt butter, add flour mixed with seasonings and add slowly stock and mushroom liquor. Cook until smooth and add cream, combine with meat and mushrooms. Cool, shape and crumb. Fry in deep fat. Drain on brown paper. Serves 6.
A classic croquette built on a very thick white sauce (panada) that sets firm when chilled. Everything depends on that chilling step.
- Chill hard before shapingThe mixture must be spread in a shallow pan and refrigerated until completely cold and stiff, at least two hours and preferably overnight. Croquettes shaped from warm or barely cool panada burst open in the fat.
- "Crumb" means a three-stage coatingRoll the shaped cylinders in fine dry breadcrumbs, then in beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then in crumbs again. The recipe assumes the reader knows this; a single dry crumbing will not hold.
- Shortening or butterThe ingredient list calls for shortening and the method says butter. Either works for the roux; butter gives better flavor in a sauce this concentrated.
- Half a can of mushroomsCanned mushrooms then came in a range of tin sizes, so treat this loosely: about 4 oz drained mushroom pieces, reserving the canning liquid for the quarter cup of "mushroom liquor." If you use fresh mushrooms, saute about 6 oz and substitute extra stock for the liquor.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives none; around 375F works well for these. Lower and the coating soaks; higher and the crust colors before the center is hot. Fry three or four at a time so the temperature does not crash.
- DrainingBrown paper was the grocery bag of the era. Use a rack set over a sheet pan, which keeps the underside crisp better than paper does.
- YieldThe recipe says it serves 6, which from one cup of chicken means small portions and a light course rather than a dinner. Doubling the whole formula is reasonable if these are the main dish.
Croquettes were a standard American answer to leftover roast fowl in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: bind chopped meat in a stiff cream sauce, chill, breadcrumb, and fry, and a cup of scraps becomes a course that looks deliberate. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch. Canned mushrooms and their liquor, called for here as a matter of course, were a mark of a well-stocked pantry in this period and did much of the work that fresh mushrooms and stock reductions do now.