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Cheese Croquettes
Make a thick bechamel sauce, and be sure that you cook it for ten minutes, constantly stirring. Add, till well flavored, some Gruyere and Parmesan cheese, mixed and grated. Let it all get cold. Then roll this mixture into the shape of carrots; roll them in finely-grated breadcrumbs, and fry them in hot lard or refined fat. Lay them on a hot dish, and, at the thicker end of each carrot stick in a sprig of parsley to look like the stalk.
A béchamel-bound croquette, the kind Belgian cooks still make as kaaskroketten. The original assumes you know the proportions and the coating routine, so both need filling in.
- The hinge: the sauce must be a panade, not a pouring sauceNothing here binds the cheese except flour and butter, so the béchamel has to be stiff enough to hold a shape when cold. Work to roughly 4 tbsp butter and 4 tbsp flour per cup of milk — about twice the flour of a coating sauce.
- Ten minutes of stirring is not paddingThat time cooks out the raw flour taste and drives off enough moisture to firm the paste. Keep the heat low and the spoon moving; a scorched patch will speckle the finished croquettes.
- Cheese quantity"Till well flavored" means about 1 to 1½ cups grated cheese to that quantity of sauce, weighted toward Gruyère with Parmesan for sharpness. Add it off the heat so it melts in rather than turning stringy.
- Add the egg wash the recipe omitsConsider adding the egg wash the recipe omits -- Crumbs cling poorly to a chilled béchamel paste on their own. Rolling each carrot in flour, then beaten egg, then crumbs makes the coating much less likely to slough off in the fat.
- Chill hard, and chill twice"Let it all get cold" means several hours in the refrigerator, spread in a shallow pan so it sets quickly. Chill the breaded croquettes another 30 minutes before frying; a soft centre is the usual cause of a blowout.
- Fat and temperature'Refined fat' here means a clarified or purified rendered fat; lard, or a modern neutral frying oil with a high smoke point, will serve. Hold it at 350–375°F and fry two or three minutes until deep gold; the inside only needs heating through.
- The carrot conceitShape them as tapered cones about three inches long and press the parsley sprig into the thick end after frying, not before, or it will blacken. Do it while the croquettes are still hot so it stays put.
- Yield and servingThat quantity of sauce gives about twelve croquettes — a first course for four, or six as a savoury. They are meant to go straight from the fat to the table; reheated, the centres weep.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in England in 1915 from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees, and its proceeds went to relief work — which is why so many of its dishes are frugal, flour-and-milk affairs that make a little cheese or shellfish go a long way. Croquettes are close to a national dish in Belgium, where cheese and shrimp versions are still standard café fare and the binding is a stiff béchamel rather than the potato used elsewhere. The carrot shaping, complete with a parsley sprig for the stalk, belongs to the long tradition of dishes disguised as other things, a fashion much older than the nineteenth century; it survived in professional and household cookery well into the Edwardian period. Gruyère is there for melt and Parmesan for flavour, a pairing the wartime supply situation would soon test.