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Veal Croquettes
Make a cream sauce of one tablespoon of butter; two tablespoons of flour; one cup of cream or milk; one teaspoon of onion juice; a little salt; pepper and paprika; one beaten egg may be stirred in, the pan left one minute and removed from the fire. Add to this two cups of minced veal, a little ham, chopped mushrooms, sweetbreads or truffles. When the mixture is cold, form into small cylinder or pyramid shapes, egg and crumb them and fry in boiling hot fat.
A classic panada-bound croquette: the sauce is the binder, not a topping, so its thickness decides whether the croquettes hold their shape or burst in the fat. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: make the sauce thick and chill it hardThe hinge: make the sauce as thick as you can and chill it hard -- one tablespoon butter to two tablespoons flour to one cup liquid gives a moderately thick sauce, lighter than the binders many croquette recipes call for, and it should be cooked a few minutes so it does not taste of raw flour. Spread the finished mixture in a shallow pan, cover the surface, and refrigerate until firm; a warm or soft mixture cannot be shaped and will split open when fried.
- The eggOptional in the original ("one beaten egg may be stirred in"). The recipe leaves the pan a minute after the egg goes in, then takes it off the fire; stir constantly, or the egg scrambles into visible threads.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a fine sieve. A teaspoon of the juice gives onion flavour without any texture, which is the point in a smooth croquette.
- The meat is already cookedThis is a leftovers recipe. The veal should be cooked and finely minced, about 10 oz to fill two cups. Raw veal will not cook through in the brief fry.
- Sweetbreads and mushroomsSweetbreads must be soaked, blanched, trimmed and cooked before they go in; they are not cooked by the frying. Mushrooms should be sauteed dry first so their water does not loosen the mixture.
- "Boiling hot fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means deep frying at around 375F. Below that the crumb coat soaks; much above it the outside colours before the centre warms. Fry three or four at a time so the temperature holds.
- Egg and crumb properlyFlour, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then fine dry crumbs. Chill the coated croquettes another 20 minutes before frying to seal the crust.
- Yield and servingMakes about 10 to 12 croquettes, enough for four. Serve with a thinner cream sauce, a tomato sauce or a mushroom sauce.
Croquettes were a fixture of American middle-class cooking from the 1880s through the 1920s, and this entry shows why: they turn the remains of a roast into a dish that looks composed enough for company. The technique is French in origin — the name comes from croquer, to crunch — and it reached American households through cooking-school teaching, where the thick white sauce used as a binder was drilled as a basic proportion to be memorised and varied. Veal, mild and pale, was the preferred meat because it took on whatever the cook added; the list of ham, mushrooms, sweetbreads and truffles is a sliding scale from thrift to display. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book to the same audience of home-managing women.