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Potato Croquettes
2 cups hot riced potatoes 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper ¼ teaspoon celery salt Few grains cayenne Few drops onion juice Yolk 1 egg 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley Mix ingredients in order given, and beat thoroughly. Shape, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry one minute in deep fat, and drain on brown paper. Croquettes are shaped in a variety of forms. The most common way is to first form a smooth ball by rolling one rounding tablespoon of mixture between hands. Then roll on a board until of desired length, and flatten ends.
A straightforward potato croquette from Fannie Farmer, with one detail that decides whether it holds together: the potato must be dry.
- Dry the potatoes firstBake or boil the potatoes and rice them while hot, then let the steam escape before mixing. Wet mash is the usual reason croquettes split open in the fat.
- "14 teaspoon celery salt"A typesetting artifact for 1/4 teaspoon. Celery salt is still sold; if you skip it, add a pinch more salt.
- Riced potatoesA ricer or food mill gives the fluffy texture wanted here. A food processor turns potato into glue and should not be used.
- Onion juicePeriod cooks pressed or scraped the juice from a cut onion rather than chopping it in. Grate a little onion on a microplane and press the pulp in a sieve; the recipe calls for only a few drops, so a very small amount is all that is wanted.
- The crumb coatingCrumbs, then beaten egg thinned with a tablespoon of water, then crumbs again. Chill the coated croquettes 20-30 minutes so the shell sets before frying.
- Frying"Deep fat" is not given a temperature here; period practice judged it by how fast a bread cube browned. In modern terms fat hot enough to brown the crust within the stated minute, roughly 375-390F, and fried in small batches so the temperature holds.
- DrainingBrown paper was the standard drain. Use a rack over a sheet pan, which keeps the underside crisp; paper towels steam the bottom soft.
- YieldTwo cups of mixture at a rounding tablespoon each gives roughly 20 croquettes, enough for five or six as a side dish.
Croquettes were everywhere in American cooking between about 1880 and 1920, and the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book devotes pages to them: chicken, veal, rice, hominy, lobster, and this potato version. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the form arrived with the French-influenced professional cookery that shaped American cooking-school teaching. Their appeal in a household kitchen was partly economic. A croquette turned leftover meat or a surplus of boiled potatoes into something that looked composed on a plate, and the shaping instructions here, rolling a ball, then a cylinder, then flattening the ends, reflect the school's belief that uniform appearance was part of the skill being taught. Fannie Farmer's own contribution to the genre was less the recipes than the level measurements: her book was among the first to insist that a teaspoon meant a defined amount rather than whatever the cook's spoon held.