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Cromesquis à la Russe
Melt two tablespoons butter, add two tablespoons flour, and pour on gradually one-half cup milk; then add one-half cup finnan haddie which has been parboiled, drained, and separated into small pieces. Season with cayenne, and spread on a plate to cool. Cut French pancakes in pieces two by four inches. On lower halves of pieces put one tablespoon mixture. Brush edges with beaten egg, fold over upper halves, press edges firmly together, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat, and drain. Serve garnished with parsley.
French Pancakes. To one-fourth cup bread flour add one-third cup milk, one egg, and one-fourth teaspoon salt beat thoroughly. Heat an omelet pan, butter generously, cover bottom of pan with mixture, cook until browned on one side, turn, and cook on other side.
A croquette dressed in a pancake instead of a crumb coat, then crumbed anyway. Success depends almost entirely on how cold and how stiff the filling is before you wrap it.
- Chill the filling hardThe béchamel-and-fish mixture must be refrigerated until it holds its shape on a spoon, not merely cooled to room temperature on a plate. Warm filling steams inside the pancake, bursts the seam and floods the fat.
- Finnan haddieCold-smoked haddock, still sold in fishmongers and by mail order. Smoked cod or any firm cold-smoked white fish substitutes. Parboiling is not optional: it draws out salt and firms the flesh so it flakes cleanly, and five minutes in barely simmering milk or water is enough.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only "deep fat"; around 375F suits it. Below that the pancake absorbs grease before it colours; above it the coating browns before the filling warms through.
- Sealing the parcelsPress the edges with the back of a fork after brushing with egg, and refrigerate the finished parcels 20-30 minutes before the crumb, egg, crumb coat. A chilled, well-sealed seam is the difference between a cromesquis and a pan of scrambled sauce.
- The pancakesOne-fourth cup flour, one-third cup milk and an egg is a thin crepe batter, not a fluffy pancake. Let it rest 20 minutes so the flour hydrates, and cook the crepes thin and pale rather than crisp, or they will crack when folded.
- Pan and quantitiesAn "omelet pan" is a shallow 8-inch skillet; a nonstick crepe pan does the same work with less butter. The batter yields roughly three or four crepes, and the filling about a cup, which at the tablespoon per piece the recipe specifies would fill well over a dozen small cromesquis.
- SeasoningCayenne is the only seasoning given, presumably because the smoked fish supplies the salt. Taste the filling before chilling and add salt only if the parboiling has taken it too far.
Cromesquis came into French from a Slavic word, though the route is disputed and it is not simply a variant of croquette. The distinguishing trick is the wrapper: a classic cromesqui encloses its bound mixture in something (calf's caul, bacon, or as here a thin pancake) before it is crumbed and fried, which is why French manuals of the period treat it as a separate item from the plain croquette. The label à la Russe may in this era have signalled little more than fashionable Russian association, much as service à la russe named the course-by-course dinner then replacing the groaning table. Fannie Farmer's inclusion of it among the entrées, filled with New England's own smoked haddock, shows how thoroughly the Boston Cooking School taught the French repertoire to American housekeepers and how readily it substituted local fish for continental ingredients.