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Fish Croquettes
Mold the cutlet mixture into cones; dip in egg and crumbs and fry in hot fat. Sprinkle with chopped parsley. 1 pint cold fish 1 pint milk 1 blade mace 1 sprig parsley
This is the second half of a pair: it assumes you have already made the fish cutlet mixture on the facing page, a thick milk panade bound with cooked fish. The ingredient list gives the components of that mixture but omits the butter and flour that hold it together.
- The hinge: chill before shapingA croquette mixture must be spread on a plate, cooled and refrigerated until firm — an hour at minimum, longer is better. Warm mixture will not hold a cone and will burst in the fat.
- What is missing from the listA pint of milk needs butter and flour cooked together into a paste, and for croquettes the proportion is far higher than for an ordinary white sauce. Without that binder the fish and milk will not cohere.
- A pint of cold fishMeasured by volume, not weight: about 10 to 12 ounces of cooked fish, flaked and picked over for bones. Leftover boiled cod, haddock or salmon would all suit, though the recipe does not specify.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, and a "blade" is one dried piece. Scald it in the milk with the parsley, then strain both out; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace is the nearest substitute.
- Frying temperature"Hot fat" means deep fat, deep enough to float the croquettes; no temperature is given, and croquettes are conventionally fried at around 375F. Cooler fat soaks in and the crust fails; hotter and the coating browns before the center warms through.
- Egg and crumbsBeat the egg with a tablespoon of water so it coats thinly. Crumb, egg, then crumb again gives a seal that is far less likely to split — worthwhile given how soft this filling is.
- YieldNo yield is given; a dozen or so cones is a reasonable expectation from this quantity. Fry three or four at a time so the fat temperature does not drop.
Croquettes — from the French croquer, to crunch — were the standard American answer to the problem of yesterday's cooked fish or fowl, and by the early twentieth century every general cookbook carried a formula: a stiff white sauce, chopped cooked protein, a chill, a crumb coat, hot fat. The placement here under Meat Substitutes is telling. Meatless and wheatless days were promoted as patriotic economy, and fish was the respectable stand-in for beef and pork. The cone shape was a convention rather than a whim: croquettes were commonly varied in shape — cones, cylinders and flattened rounds — on a mixed platter.