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Chestnut Croquettes
2 cups hot mashed chestnuts
2 eggs
4 tablespoons butter or other
Few drops onion-juice or 2 fat tablespoons finely chopped
Salt and pepper onion
Egg and crums
Mix the chestnuts, butter, slightly beaten eggs and seasonings. Shape into croquettes. Roll in crums, beaten egg and crums. Fry in deep hot fat until crums are brown.
This offers an adequate protein, iron and a comparatively highly seasoned dish. The croquettes may be served with brown sauce or tomato sauce.
The ingredient list has been mangled by the book's two-column setting; read it as 2 cups hot mashed chestnuts, 2 eggs, 4 tablespoons butter, a few drops of onion juice or 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion, salt and pepper, and egg and crumbs for coating. The recipe is sound but assumes you know how to keep a soft croquette together in deep fat.
- Chill the mixture firstThis is the hinge. Chestnut purée bound only with egg and butter will slump or burst in the fat if shaped warm. Spread the mixture in a shallow dish, refrigerate until firm, then shape and coat, and chill the coated croquettes again for 20 minutes before frying.
- How many chestnutsTwo cups of mashed chestnuts takes roughly 2 lb of chestnuts in the shell, or somewhere around 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb peeled. Vacuum-packed cooked peeled chestnuts work directly; unsweetened canned puree is looser and may need less butter.
- PeelingScore an X in the flat side, roast at 425F or boil 15-20 minutes, and peel while hot — both the shell and the inner brown skin have to come off, and they will not once the nut cools.
- "Crums"Dry breadcrumbs, not fresh. The order given is correct and deliberate: crumbs, then beaten egg, then crumbs again. The first light dusting gives the egg something to grip on a soft, buttery mixture.
- FryingThe book says only 'deep hot fat'; about 375F is the usual working temperature. Cooler and the croquettes drink fat and fall apart; hotter and the crumbs brown before the inside is hot. The chestnuts are already cooked, so 2-3 minutes for colour is enough. Fry in small batches.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid — a period trick for onion flavour without visible pieces. The chopped-onion alternative should be softened in a little of the butter first, or it stays raw and crunchy inside.
- Yield and servingAbout 10 to 12 croquettes, serving four as a main course with the suggested brown or tomato sauce, six as a side. Season the mixture more assertively than seems right cold; chestnut is sweet and mild.
Chestnut croquettes belong to a specific moment in American food writing, when domestic science teaching had begun tallying dishes by their nutrients and vegetarian cookery needed to prove it could supply protein and iron — hence the closing sentence, which reads less like a cook's note than a report card. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published household books aimed at the same middle-class woman buying its sewing patterns, and such volumes could carry a Vegetarian Dishes chapter. Chestnuts were the obvious candidate for a meat substitute: starchy, filling, and at that date cheap and abundant in the eastern United States, where the American chestnut was still a dominant forest tree. The blight that effectively removed it, first identified in New York in the first decade of the century, is why chestnuts are now an imported specialty item rather than a bulk autumn staple. The croquette form itself is French kitchen practice, absorbed wholesale into American cookbooks as a respectable way to serve almost any purée or leftover.