Rice Croquettes
INGREDIENTS for 8 croquettes. lb. of rice, 1 quart of milk, 6 oz. of pounded sugar, flavouring of vanilla, lemon-peel or bitter almonds, egg and bread-crumbs, hot lard. AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Put the rice, milk and sugar into a saucepan, and let the former gradually swell over a gentle fire until all the milk is dried up; and just before the rice is done, stir in a few drops of essence of any of the above flavourings. Let the rice get cold; then form it into small round balls, dip them into yolk of egg, sprinkle them with breadcrumbs, and fry them in boiling lard for about 10 minutes, turning them about that they may get equally browned. Drain the greasy moisture from them, by placing them on a cloth in front of the fire for a minute or two; pile them on a white d'oyley, and send them quickly to table. A small piece of jam is sometimes introduced into the middle of each croquette, which adds very much to the flavour of this dish.
TIME. From to 1 hour to swell the rice; about 10 minutes to fry the croquettes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian sweet croquette: rice cooked to a stiff milk pudding, rolled, crumbed and deep-fried. Most of the work is in getting the rice dry and cold enough to hold its shape.
- The hinge: dry the rice properlyThe rice must absorb the milk completely and then be chilled until stiff — several hours or overnight, spread in a shallow tray. Damp or barely cool rice will slump in the fat and shed its coating.
- The rice quantityThe weight of rice has dropped out of the ingredient list. A quart of milk to 6 oz sugar suggests roughly 8 oz (about 1 cup) of short-grain pudding rice; treat that as a reconstruction rather than the original figure.
- Frying timeTen minutes is long for a ball of already-cooked rice at modern frying temperatures. At 350–375F they colour in 2–3 minutes; much longer and the crust darkens before anything is gained inside.
- Egg and crumbsYolk alone gives a thin, patchy coating. Beaten whole egg, and a second pass of crumb on any bare patch, holds much better — particularly if you are hiding jam in the middle.
- Bitter almondsThe flavouring options include bitter almonds, which contain amygdalin and release cyanide; their sale for eating is banned or restricted in most countries. Use modern almond extract, whose flavour comes from benzaldehyde and which is processed to remove the cyanogenic compounds.
- FatLard fries cleanly and takes the heat, but any neutral oil at the same temperature works. You need 2–3 inches in a deep pan so the croquettes float and turn.
- DrainingA wire rack over a tray does the job the cloth-before-the-fire was meant to do. Paper under the rack catches drips without steaming the crust.
- Yield and servingEight croquettes, so a modest dessert for four. The 'white d'oyley' is a small ornamental mat — paper, linen or lace — set on the serving plate; a folded napkin does as well. Serve within minutes of frying.
Croquettes of sweetened rice belong to the same nineteenth-century repertoire as rice pudding and riz à l'impératrice — cheap grain enriched with milk and sugar, then dressed up by frying to make it worth sending to table. The stated average cost of tenpence marks it as an economical sweet in Beeton's scheme, where most recipes carry a price so a mistress could budget. Rice reached British kitchens in quantity through overseas trade and by Beeton's day was a staple pantry item, which fits the marking 'seasonable at any time': unlike fruit puddings, it depended on nothing that came and went with the year. The recipe itself notes that the optional dab of jam at the centre 'adds very much to the flavour'.