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Salmon Croquettes
1 3/4 cups cooked salmon, fresh or canned 2 tablespoons butter 1/3 cup flour 1 cup milk Salt and pepper Cayenne 1 teaspoon lemon-juice Egg and crums Make a white sauce with the fat, flour and milk. Add salt, a little white pepper, and a few grains of cayenne. To this cream foundation add cold flaked salmon and lemon-juice. Spread on a plate to cool. Shape, dip in fine crums, roll in egg and again in crums and fry in deep fat.
A classic croquette panada: a very stiff white sauce bound with flaked fish, chilled hard, then breaded and fried. Almost everything depends on the chilling.
- Chill until firm, not just cool"Spread on a plate to cool" understates it. Spread the mixture no more than an inch thick and refrigerate at least two hours, or until it is solid enough to cut; a warm or soft mixture will burst in the fat.
- The sauce is meant to be a pasteA third of a cup of flour to one cup of milk makes something closer to a thick pastry paste than a pouring sauce. That is correct for croquettes. Cook it two or three minutes after it thickens so the flour loses its raw taste, stirring constantly, as it will catch easily.
- Fat and flour are not equal hereTwo tablespoons of butter to a third of a cup of flour is lean by modern roux practice. It works, but the mixture will be stiff and slightly dry; a third tablespoon of butter gives a smoother paste without loosening the bind.
- "Crums" and the breading orderCrums is simply crumbs — fine dry breadcrumbs. The sequence given (crumbs, egg, crumbs) is deliberate and worth following: the first light coat of crumbs gives the egg something to grip. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water or milk so it coats thinly.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "fry in deep fat" and gives no temperature. Modern practice for croquettes is around 375F: cooler and they soak; hotter and the crust colors before the center warms through. Fry a few at a time so the temperature does not crash, about two to three minutes to a deep gold.
- Canned salmonDrain it well and press out excess liquid, or the panada will slacken. The soft vertebrae and skin in traditional canned salmon are edible and can be mashed in, though many cooks remove the skin for texture.
- Let them rest after breadingFifteen to thirty minutes in the refrigerator after crumbing sets the coating and greatly reduces splitting in the fat.
- YieldAbout eight croquettes, enough for four as a light main course. The recipe suggests no sauce; a thin egg sauce, tomato sauce or plain lemon would suit.
Croquettes were a mainstay of American "made-over dishes" cookery: a stiff white sauce will carry almost any cooked scrap of fish, poultry or meat into a dish that looks deliberate rather than salvaged. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the technique reached American cookbooks through the French-influenced cooking-school tradition of the late nineteenth century. Salmon became a pantry staple after Pacific and Columbia River canneries made it one of the cheapest reliable proteins on the shelf, and canned salmon recipes multiplied in household magazines in the early decades of the twentieth century. The Delineator was Butterick's magazine, sold alongside dress patterns to women running households on a budget, and this recipe is exactly the kind it favored \a a cup of milk, and a hot pan turned into something that could be served to company.