Home › Poultry and Game › Chicken Croquettes
Chicken Croquettes
Cut up fine any kind of cold fowl, season with salt, pepper and butter, a little onion, stir in two fresh eggs. Make in cakes, dip in beaten egg, then in oatmeal and fry in boiling lard or lard and butter mixed.
A frugal use-it-up recipe from the era when cold roast fowl was a standing feature of the larder. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how croquettes behave, so the proportions and the binding step need filling in.
- Quantity to expectThe recipe gives no quantities. About 2 cups of finely chopped cooked chicken, roughly 10 to 12 ounces, with two eggs should give six to eight cakes, enough for three or four as a main course.
- The binding is the hingeTwo eggs alone will barely hold chopped meat together and the cakes tend to break apart in the fat. Many croquette recipes of the period rely on a stiff, cold white sauce; adding half a cup of thick bechamel or a few tablespoons of dry breadcrumbs, then chilling the mixture at least an hour, makes cakes that hold their shape.
- "Cut up fine"Hand-chopped to a fine dice, not pureed. A food processor turns cooked chicken to paste in seconds, so pulse sparingly or use a knife.
- Onion"A little onion" here means raw grated or very finely minced onion, perhaps a tablespoon. Softening it in butter first avoids the harsh raw bite and the crunch of undercooked onion in the middle of a croquette.
- The butterSeasoning "with butter" means working a tablespoon or two of softened butter into the mixture for richness and moisture, not melting it in. Cold leftover breast meat is dry and needs it.
- Oatmeal coatingPeriod oatmeal for coating was fine or medium ground meal, closer to today's quick oats or oat flour than to rolled jumbo oats. Whole rolled oats will not adhere well and scorch in hot fat; pulse them fine or substitute breadcrumbs.
- "Boiling lard"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around the food, about 350-365F. Butter mixed into the frying fat will brown and burn at that temperature, so use lard, or clarified butter if you want the flavour.
- Cold fowlLeftover roast chicken, turkey, duck or boiled fowl all work. If starting from raw, poach a 3-4 lb bird and let it cool completely before chopping; warm meat makes a slack mixture that is harder to shape.
Croquettes were a standard nineteenth-century answer to the second day of a roast, and many American household books of the period carry several versions: chicken, veal, rice, salmon, potato. The word comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the dish arrived through the same channel as much of the era's genteel cookery, French service filtered through English and then American kitchens. Books aimed at new housekeepers leaned heavily on economy, and turning the remains of Sunday's fowl into a presentable Tuesday dinner was the kind of thrift they taught. The oatmeal coating in place of the usual breadcrumbs is a homelier touch.