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Chicken Croquettes
2 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup flour 1 cup milk 1 3/4 cups cooked fowl Salt and pepper 1/4 teaspoon celery salt 1 teaspoon lemon-juice Few drops onion-juice 1 teaspoon chopped parsley Egg and crums Make a white sauce with the fat, flour and milk. Add fowl, seasoned with celery salt, lemon-juice, onion-juice, parsley, and salt and pepper. Cool, shape, dip in flour or fine crums, egg and crums, and fry in deep fat. White meat of fowl absorbs more sauce than dark meat.
A croquette is a stiff white sauce doing the work of glue, so the whole recipe turns on how firm the panada is and how cold it gets before shaping. Everything else is seasoning and frying technique.
- Chill it hardChill it well -- "Cool" at minimum means letting the mixture set firm before shaping; refrigerating it until cold and solid all the way through makes shaping easier. Warm or barely-set croquette paste is liable to split open in the fat and let the filling escape.
- The flour is deliberately heavyTwo tablespoons butter to half a cup flour and one cup milk gives a paste far stiffer than a pouring sauce, which is what holds the shape. If the mixture seizes into a lump before the flour is cooked, keep it over low heat and work it with a wooden spoon; if it feels dry and pasty rather than smooth, an extra spoonful or two of milk is reasonable.
- "Crums"Simply an older spelling of crumbs. Fine dry breadcrumbs, not fresh, and not the coarse panko sold today; sift or roll them fine so the coating sits tight against the croquette.
- Egg and crumsThe recipe allows either flour or fine crumbs for the first coat, then beaten egg (thinned with a little water or milk), then crumbs. Letting the breaded croquettes rest in the refrigerator before frying helps the coating set.
- Deep fat temperatureThe book gives none; the fat was judged by eye. Around 375F is the usual modern figure: too cool and the coating soaks up fat, too hot and it colors before the cold interior has heated through.
- "Fowl"This meant an older stewing hen, tougher and more gelatinous than a modern broiler. Cooked meat picked from a stewed hen, or from a roast chicken or turkey, all work; the recipe's closing note says white meat absorbs more sauce than dark, so a mixture of light and dark may give a more even texture.
- Onion-juiceMade by grating a peeled onion on a fine rasp and using the liquid that collects. A small amount of grated onion, or a pinch of onion powder, can stand in, though the flavor will not be identical.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. This quantity of meat and thick sauce would make roughly eight small cone or cylinder croquettes, enough for about four servings with a vegetable.