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Salmon Croquettes
Put two and one-half tablespoons butter in saucepan, stir until melted and bubbling, add one-third cup flour and blend thoroughly. Pour in gradually one cup scalded milk adding about one-third at a time till mixture is smooth and glossy. Add one-fourth teaspoon of salt and a few grains of white pepper, also a little cayenne. To this cream foundation add one and three-fourths cup of cold flaked salmon (either fresh or canned) and one teaspoon of lemon juice. Spread on a plate to cool. Shape, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry in deep fat.
A classic panada-bound croquette: a very stiff white sauce carries the fish, chills to a sliceable paste, then goes through a double crumbing before frying. Two things decide success — the thickness of the sauce and how cold the mixture is when you shape it.
- Chill it properly"Spread on a plate to cool" means spread it thin, no more than an inch, and refrigerate until genuinely firm — two hours, or overnight. Warm or soft mixture bursts its coating in the fat, which is the usual cause of croquette failure.
- The sauce is meant to be stiffOne-third cup flour (about five and a third tablespoons) to one cup milk is several times the thickening of an ordinary pouring sauce, and more flour than butter by volume. Cook it a full two to three minutes after it comes together so the flour loses its raw taste; it should pull away from the pan in a mass.
- Scalded milkHeating the milk to just below a boil was usual in period recipes; it speeds the sauce, and is often explained by the state of milk before pasteurisation. Cold milk works fine with modern milk, added in the same three stages.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe first light coat of crumbs gives the beaten egg something to grip. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water to thin it, and chill the breaded croquettes again for fifteen minutes before frying.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only "fry in deep fat." Use 375F. Lower and the crust absorbs oil before it sets; higher and the outside colours before the centre is hot. Two to three minutes gives a deep gold.
- Canned salmonA modern 14.75 oz can, drained, gives somewhat more than the one and three-quarter cups called for; measure rather than tipping in the whole tin. Remove the skin if you like, but the soft vertebral bones can be crushed in — they were considered part of the food and are a real source of calcium.
- YieldMakes about eight to ten cork- or cone-shaped croquettes, enough for four as a lunch or supper dish. A thin white sauce, egg sauce or tomato sauce is the conventional accompaniment.
Croquettes were a fixture of American middle-class cooking from the 1880s through the 1920s, and their logic is economical: a cup of thick sauce stretches a modest amount of fish, chicken or veal into a dish that eats like something richer. Canned salmon made this particular version possible for households far from the coast — Pacific canneries had been shipping tinned salmon east in quantity since the 1870s, and by the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book in 1911 it was one of the cheapest reliable proteins on a grocer's shelf. The recipe is really a demonstration of a panada, the very stiff béchamel that binds croquettes, quenelles and soufflé bases alike, and cookery writers of the period taught it as a foundation to be varied rather than a single dish.