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Cheese Croquettes
(TOURAINE.) INGREDIENTS. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter. ¼ a cup of flour. 2/3 a cup of milk.
Yolks of 2 eggs.
1 cup of mild cheese, cut in small cubes. 1/2 a cup of grated Gruyère cheese.
Salt and cayenne to taste.
An ingredient list from the chafing-dish era for a classic croquette mixture: a very stiff white sauce bound with yolks and loaded with two cheeses. A few of the quantities and conventions need translating.
- The flour quantityThe printed figure for flour reads "14 a cup," which is not a usable amount. The proportions here (3 tablespoons butter to 2/3 cup milk) point to a quarter cup of flour, which gives the thick panade a croquette needs.
- What the butter, flour and milk are forThey make what croquette cookery usually calls a panade: a thick roux-based sauce cooked far stiffer than a pouring béchamel, thick enough to pull away from the pan in a mass. This is the hinge of the dish: too thin and the croquettes burst in the fat.
- Adding the yolksBeat the yolks in off the heat, then return the pan briefly over low heat to set them. Yolks dropped into a boiling sauce will curdle into threads.
- "Mild cheese"In American cookbooks of this period this most likely means a young, unaged cheese: a mild factory cheddar or similar, rather than a sharp aged one. A mild young cheddar or Monterey Jack cut in small cubes gives the melting pockets intended.
- GruyèreThe grated Gruyère is for flavour and body throughout the mixture, while the cubes stay distinct. Genuine Swiss or French Gruyère is worth the outlay here; processed "Swiss" slices will not do the same work.
- ChillingSpread the finished mixture on a shallow buttered plate and refrigerate until firm, at least two hours, before shaping. Warm croquette paste cannot be rolled and will not hold in the fat.
- Coating and fryingRoll the shaped pieces in fine crumbs, then beaten egg, then crumbs again, and fry at 375°F until deep gold — one to two minutes. Cheese croquettes fry faster than meat ones because the interior only needs to melt, not heat through.
- YieldThis quantity makes roughly ten to twelve small croquettes, enough for four as a first course or a light lunch with salad.
The parenthetical "(TOURAINE.)" is most often read as a source credit to the Hotel Touraine, the Boston hotel that opened in the late 1890s and was for a generation one of the city's fashionable dining rooms -- though Touraine is also a French province, and the tag cannot be pinned down with certainty from the recipe alone. Compilers of the period did sometimes tag recipes with the hotel or restaurant they were gathered from, and such an attribution carried a suggestion of quality. Croquettes themselves -- the name comes from French croquer, to crunch -- were very popular in American cooking from the 1880s onward, precisely because a stiff panade could carry almost any expensive ingredient in small quantity and turn it into a course.