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Croquettes of Boiled Meat
I think that boiled meat when cold is often neglected as being tasteless, but, prepared as I will show you, it will deserve your approval. Mince your boiled meat and put it into a thick white sauce well-spiced with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and let it remain for two hours. Then prepare your croquettes by rolling the mixture in white of egg and fine breadcrumbs. Put a piece of butter in the saucepan, sufficient to take all the croquettes, and let them brown in it for about ten minutes. A white sauce served with them is a good addition.
A leftovers dish built on a very stiff white sauce, which is the whole trick: the béchamel is the binder, not a garnish. Get it thick enough and the croquettes hold; get it thin and they collapse in the pan.
- The hinge: sauce thicknessThe white sauce must be a panade — roughly 3 tablespoons each butter and flour to 1 cup milk, cooked until it pulls away from the pan in a mass. A pouring béchamel will not set, however long it chills.
- "Let it remain for two hours"The original does not say why; most likely the mixture needs to go cold and firm before it can be shaped, rather than to marinate. Spread it in a shallow dish and refrigerate rather than leaving cooked meat standing at room temperature.
- Proportions, since none are givenAbout 2 cups finely minced cooked meat to 1 to 1¼ cups of the stiff sauce gives a mixture that shapes well. That makes roughly 12 croquettes, enough for four.
- Egg white aloneThe original uses white of egg only, which sets crisp and keeps the crust pale. A whole beaten egg loosened with a spoonful of water coats more reliably; either way, crumb, rest 20 minutes in the fridge, and crumb again for a coat that will not split.
- Frying in butterButter over ten minutes at frying heat will brown past the point you want. Use clarified butter, or butter with a neutral oil, over medium heat, and turn the croquettes to colour all sides — six to eight minutes is usually enough once they are golden and hot through.
- The meatThe recipe says only "boiled meat"; boiled beef left from a pot-au-feu or hochepot would fit. Any cooked braised meat works; mince it fine by hand or pulse briefly, as a paste-like texture ruins the contrast with the crust.
- SeasoningCold boiled meat is bland and the sauce absorbs salt, so season the béchamel more aggressively than seems right while it is hot. Nutmeg is called for in the original and is conventional in white sauce across the Low Countries and much of Europe.
- The accompanying sauceServe a thinner version of the same béchamel, slackened with some of the broth the meat was boiled in, which gives it flavour the milk alone cannot.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled during the First World War from recipes collected from Belgian refugees in Britain, and its economy is not a stylistic pose — it is the household arithmetic of people who had lost their kitchens. Croquettes are a Low Countries institution, and Belgium in particular treats the thick-béchamel croquette as a national form, most famously with shrimp or cheese; the meat version here is the everyday one, plausibly the second life of boiled beef from a hochepot or pot-au-feu, though that lineage is inference rather than documented household practice. The faintly defensive opening — boiled meat "neglected as being tasteless" — is characteristic of the whole book, which is less about luxury than about arguing that thrift can be made to taste of something. Nutmeg in a white sauce is a Flemish and Dutch habit of long standing, often said to descend from the spice trade of the old ports.