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Potato Croquettes
Cook your potatoes, rub them through the sieve, add pepper and salt, two or three eggs, lightly beaten, mixing both yolks and whites, and according to the quantity you are making a little butter and milk. Work all well and let it get cold. Roll into croquettes, roll each in beaten egg, then in finely grated breadcrumbs, and let them cook in boiling fat or lard.
A recipe written for a cook who already knows what a croquette should feel like; the quantities are left to judgement. The two things that decide success are how dry the potato is and how cold the mixture gets before shaping.
- Quantities to start fromFor about 2 lb (900 g) of potatoes, use 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons butter and milk only by the spoonful if the mash is stiff. That makes roughly 16 croquettes, enough for four to six as a side.
- Choose a floury potatoRussets or another mealy variety mash dry; waxy potatoes hold water and the mixture will slump in the fat. Boil or steam them in their skins, peel while hot, then rice or sieve them.
- Dry the mashReturn the sieved potato to the pan over low heat for a minute or two, stirring, until it stops steaming. Excess moisture is a common cause of croquettes bursting.
- "Let it get cold" is the hingeNot merely cool — chilled through, an hour or more in the refrigerator. Warm potato mixture cannot be rolled cleanly and will split the crumb coating in the fryer.
- BreadingFlour, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs gives a coating that holds better than egg and crumb alone. A second pass through egg and crumb makes them nearly bombproof. Chill again after breading.
- Frying fat and temperature"Boiling fat" means fat at frying heat, not literally boiling: modern practice is 350–375°F (175–190°C). The recipe offers fat or lard; any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. Fry in small batches for 2–3 minutes, until deep gold, and drain on a rack rather than paper so the crust stays crisp.
- SeasoningSeason the mash more assertively than seems right — the crumb coating and the fat mute it. A scrape of nutmeg is a common addition in Belgian versions, though this recipe leaves it out.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled during the First World War from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees in Britain, and its plainness is part of the record: instructions are given as one cook would give them to another, with quantities left to the eye and the pantry. Potato croquettes belong to the standard Franco-Belgian repertoire of fried mashed-potato garnishes, which appear in French cookery well before the nineteenth century — the word croquette comes from the French croquer, to crunch — and they remain a fixture beside roast meat and game in Belgium today, usually shaped as short cylinders and often flavoured with nutmeg. That the dish appears here in three sentences says something about how useful it was: a way of turning yesterday's potatoes into something worth serving.