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Turnip Croquettes
Wash, pare, and cut in quarters new French turnips. Steam until tender, mash, pressing out all water that is possible. This is best accomplished by wringing in cheese-cloth. Season one and one-fourth cups with salt and pepper, then add yolks of two eggs slightly beaten. Cool, shape in small croquettes, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry in deep fat, and drain.
A straightforward croquette that lives or dies on how dry you get the turnip. Everything else is standard breading and frying.
- Get the water outTurnip holds more moisture than potato, and a wet purée breaks up in the fat. The recipe itself calls wringing the mash in cheesecloth the best way to do it. Wring until no more water will come and the mass holds a shape on a spoon.
- "New French turnips"Most likely the small young white turnips; the nearest thing on sale now is the Tokyo, salad or hakurei turnip, or simply the smallest white turnips in the bunch. Old storage turnips and rutabaga are coarser and more sulphurous; if that is all you have, expect a stronger flavour.
- QuantityOne and a quarter cups of pressed mash takes roughly 1½ to 2 lb of raw turnip, depending on how much water comes out. That yields about a dozen small croquettes, enough for four as a side.
- BindingTwo yolks into 1¼ cups of purée is a light bind. If the mixture still slumps after chilling, a tablespoon or two of dry breadcrumbs or a spoonful of thick béchamel firms it without masking the turnip.
- Chilling"Cool" at least means cold enough to handle and shape; chilling right through, say an hour in the refrigerator, makes the mixture easier to work. Shaped croquettes hold better if chilled again after breading.
- Crumb, egg, crumbThe first pass of crumbs gives the egg something dry to cling to. Use the whites left from the yolks, loosened with a spoonful of water, and press the second coat on firmly so no purée shows.
- FryingThe recipe gives no temperature; deep fat at around 375°F suits these. They need only two to three minutes to colour, since the filling is already cooked; longer and the coating darkens while steam builds inside. Fry in small batches and drain on a rack rather than flat paper.
Croquettes were everywhere in American cookery around 1900, and the cookbooks of the period give them a whole run of variations — chicken, rice, hominy, sweetbread, and vegetables like this one. The technique came from French professional kitchens, where croquer, to crunch, named the crisp shell over a soft bound interior, and it suited the era's cooking-school ethos perfectly: it turned leftovers or a plain vegetable into something that could be arranged on a doily and sent to table looking composed. Turnips in particular benefited from the treatment. They were cheap and abundant, and dressing them in egg and crumbs gave a plain root a more finished look. The insistence on "new French turnips" reflects a real distinction of the period between the small, sweet, quick-grown market varieties and the big coarse roots kept in cellars over winter.