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French Potato Croquettes
2 cups hot riced potatoes 2 tablespoons butter Few grains cayenne Yolks 3 eggs ½ teaspoon salt Mix ingredients in order given, and beat thoroughly. Shape in balls, then in rolls, pointed at ends. Roll in flour, mark in three places on top of each with knife-blade to represent a small French loaf. Fry in deep fat, and drain on brown paper.
P POTATO CROQUETTES READY FOR FRYING. Page 316.
POTATO NESTS (Page 314). POTATOES, SOMERSET STYLE (Page 315). CUCUMBER SALAD. - Page 328.
CUCUMBER BASKETS. - Page 328.
A plain panade-free croquette: hot potato, butter and egg yolk, shaped and floured rather than breaded. Everything depends on the potato being dry.
- The hinge: dry, hot, starchy potatoUse russets or another mealy variety, baked or boiled in their skins, then peeled and pushed through a ricer while still hot. Wet or waxy potato will slump in the fat and the croquettes are more likely to burst. Two cups riced is roughly a pound to a pound and a quarter of raw potatoes.
- Riced, not mashedA ricer or food mill gives the fluffy, lump-free texture the recipe assumes. A food processor turns cooked potato to glue and should not be used here.
- "Few grains cayenne"A pinch, no more than 1/8 teaspoon. Fannie Farmer used cayenne where a modern cook would reach for white pepper.
- Deep fat temperatureThe book gives no temperature, relying on the older bread-cube test rather than a thermometer; fry at about 375F. Below about 360F the flour coat soaks fat, above 390F the outside colors before the inside heats through. Two to three minutes, turning, until deep gold.
- Flour is the only coatingThere is no egg wash or crumb, so the surface must be barely tacky. Chill the shaped rolls 20-30 minutes, then flour them just before they go into the fat.
- The three knife marksPurely decorative, imitating the slashes on a baguette. Score lightly after flouring; cut too deep and the croquette splits open in the fat.
- Draining'Brown paper' was plain unbleached wrapping paper. Use a wire rack over a sheet pan, or paper towels; a rack keeps the crust from going soft underneath.
- YieldAbout twelve croquettes, serving four to six as a side dish. Serve at once, as they are best within minutes of frying.
- The trailing linesThe text ending in page references is a set of plate captions from the illustrations, not part of the method.
Potato croquettes entered American cookbooks from French professional practice, where croquette (from croquer, to crunch) covered any bound mixture shaped, coated and fried. What makes this version "French" in Fannie Farmer's book is above all the shaping: pointed at both ends and slashed three times to mimic a small French loaf. That kind of trompe-l'oeil garnish was standard in turn-of-the-century American cooking-school teaching, which drew its vocabulary and its plate presentation from French kitchens while working with domestic ingredients and a single cook. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book is full of the same impulse - potato nests, cucumber baskets, duchesse borders piped through a pastry bag - dishes whose appeal lay in a homely staple made to look deliberate.