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Plain Beef Croquettes
Chop fine in a wooden bowl some cold roast or corned beef and mix in twice the quantity of well-seasoned hot mashed potatoes. Beat one egg and work it in with the mass and shape the mixture into little cakes. Roll either in flour or egg and cracker crumbs and fry in deep fat.
A thrift dish built on leftovers, with proportions given by volume rather than weight. The whole thing hinges on the potato being hot when the meat goes in, and on the cakes being cold when they go into the fat.
- Proportions"Twice the quantity" most likely means twice by volume: say 1 cup chopped beef to 2 cups mashed potato. The recipe gives no absolute quantities, so the yield depends entirely on how much cold beef you have.
- Corned beef is already saltedIf you use corned beef, season the potatoes lightly and taste the mixture before adding anything more. With plain roast beef you will want salt, pepper and often a little grated onion or parsley, since the recipe leans entirely on the potato for flavour.
- Hot potato, then chillMixing into hot mashed potato binds the mass; the egg then sets it as it cools. Shape the cakes and refrigerate them at least 30 minutes before frying or they will slump and split in the fat.
- Chop, do not grindThe wooden bowl and chopper give small irregular pieces. A food processor turns cooked beef to paste in seconds; hand-chop, or pulse very briefly.
- CoatingFlour alone gives a thin crust. For the sturdier version, flour first, then beaten egg, then crumbs — the original's "egg and cracker crumbs" skips the flour step, which works if the cakes are well chilled. Cracker crumbs means crushed plain soda or water crackers; dry breadcrumbs behave much the same way.
- Deep fatThe recipe gives no temperature; around 375F is the usual modern figure. Any cooler and the potato drinks oil; hotter and the crumbs colour before the centre is hot. Two to three minutes should be enough, since everything in the cake is already cooked — you are only browning and heating through.
- Shape"Little cakes" here means flat patties rather than the cone or cylinder croquettes of the same era. Flat cakes cook faster and are less likely to burst.
Croquettes were one familiar American answer to the Monday problem: a Sunday roast, a bowl of cold potatoes, and a household that did not throw food away. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and by the 1880s and 1890s cookbooks were printing dozens of variants — chicken, veal, salmon, rice, hominy — all following the same logic of a bound leftover, coated and fried. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, aimed its cookery books at exactly this reader: a woman running a household on a fixed budget who needed the second appearance of a joint of beef to look like a dish rather than a remainder. The mention of a wooden chopping bowl is a reminder of the era's equipment, though it fixes no date on its own; the bowl and half-moon chopper were in common use alongside, and eventually displaced by, the hand-cranked meat grinder and later the electric appliance.