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Fish Croquettes
1 cup white sauce. 1/2 cup bread crumbs. 2 cups minced white fish. Shape and fry as other croquettes.
Veal, oyster, lamb, lobster, rice, potatoes and peas can all be made into croquettes using sauce to make the proper consistency. Croquettes can be baked in oven. Meat croquettes are pretty shaped as pears with macaroni stem on top.
A shorthand entry that assumes you already know the croquette method from elsewhere in the book. The proportions are sound; almost everything else is left to the cook.
- Chill the mixture firstThis is the hinge. A warm fish-and-sauce mixture will not hold a shape and will burst in the fat. Spread it in a shallow pan, cover, and refrigerate at least two hours, preferably overnight, before shaping.
- White sauce means a thick oneNot pouring béchamel. A croquette binder is usually made with something nearer 3 to 4 tablespoons each of butter and flour to 1 cup milk, cooked until it pulls away from the pan. A thin sauce gives a mixture that is much harder to firm up, whatever the crumb ratio.
- The fish is already cookedTwo cups minced white fish means poached, steamed or leftover cooked fish, flaked and picked over for bones. Raw fish will weep liquid into the sauce. Cod, haddock, hake or pollock all work.
- The coating is missing"Fry as other croquettes" refers to the standard sequence: roll in fine dry crumbs, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then crumbs again. Let the coated croquettes rest 20 minutes in the refrigerator so the crust sets.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat at 375F, three or four croquettes at a time so the oil does not drop. They need only two to three minutes to brown, since everything inside is cooked already.
- If baking instead400F for about 20 minutes on a greased sheet, turning once. Brush or spray the crumbs with melted butter or oil, or they stay pale and floury.
- Season itThe recipe lists no salt, pepper, lemon or parsley. Cooked white fish bound in milk sauce is bland without them; taste the mixture before chilling, when you can still correct it.
- YieldAbout eight croquettes, serving four as a main course with a sauce, or six as a first course.
- The pear shapeThe macaroni stem is a short length of macaroni set into the top, purely decorative rather than something to eat. The recipe does not say at what stage it is added.
Croquettes were a standard American use for cooked food left from an earlier meal, and the list of substitutions here -- lobster, veal, rice, peas -- is really a formula rather than a recipe: any minced cooked thing plus enough thick sauce to bind it. Mary A. Wilson wrote for Philadelphia readers in the years around the First World War, when the U.S. Food Administration's campaigns against household waste gave a moral weight to dishes built from remnants, and her books are full of these open-ended templates. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch. The pear shape with its macaroni stem is a decorative convention of the period.