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Sweet Rice Croquettes
To rice croquette mixture add two tablespoons powdered sugar and grated rind one-half lemon. Shape in cylinder forms, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry in deep fat, and drain.
This is a variation entry: it assumes you have already made the book's plain rice croquette mixture, which is rice cooked soft in milk, bound with egg yolk, seasoned, and cooled until firm. Everything here hangs on that base being cold and stiff before you shape it.
- The base mixtureThe book's plain rice croquette mixture is rice cooked soft in milk and bound with egg, then cooled. It must be spread on a plate and chilled until cold and solid; warm mixture will not hold a cylinder and will burst in the fat.
- Powdered sugarIn this period "powdered sugar" generally means finely granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-containing confectioners' sugar sold today. Either will work at two tablespoons.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe order is deliberate and correct. A first light coat of dry crumbs gives the egg something to grip on a damp, starchy surface; the second coat is what browns. Use fine dry crumbs, not fresh soft ones.
- Fat temperatureDeep fat for croquettes wants to be around 375-390F; the book itself judges heat by how fast a cube of bread browns. Cooler and the coating soaks; hotter and the outside colors before the inside is hot. They need only about a minute, until deep golden.
- Rest the coatingAfter breading, chilling the shaped croquettes for a spell helps set the crust and reduces the risk of a split seam dumping rice into the oil.
- Where it sits in a mealSweetened and lemon-scented, these read as a sweet rather than a savory croquette. A spoonful of jam, a fruit sauce, or a dusting of sugar suits them.
Croquettes were a fixture of turn-of-the-century American cooking because they solved a household problem: they turned small quantities of cooked rice, meat, or fish into something that looked composed on a plate. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book teaches by building variations onto a single base, and this entry is a clear example of the method: one mixture, then a paragraph that turns it sweet with sugar and lemon rind. The mixture is coated in crumbs, then egg, then crumbs again before it meets the deep fat.