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Apple Croquettes
An apple marmalade is prepared as for apple-bread and formed by the hands into the shape of pears. Have two or three well-whisked eggs in a dish or basin, dip each croquette into this and throw them afterwards into a dish of very fine breadcrumbs. Smooth them over with a knife and dip a second time into the egg. Fry in a sautepan of very best lard until the bread colors a golden brown. Remove and place on a sieve to drain and then pile pyramid-fashion on a folded napkin and dust freely with sifted sugar which has been flavored with orange.
Rice Croquettes (Sweet.) Put one-half pint of well-washed rice into a saucepan with one pint of water, or milk and water in equal proportions, and steam for half an hour, or until the rice is quite soft. When it is still hot, add two tablespoonfuls of sugar, one teaspoonful of butter, the yolk of an egg well beaten, and a small quantity of hot milk, if required, to moisten it. Let it get cool; then make it into oval shapes, and put them into breadcrumbs, egg, and then crumbs again, and fry for a few minutes in boiling fat until done and light brown in color. After making the mixture into oval shapes, some cooks push the thumb into the center of each, and in the cavity place two boiled raisins or candied cherries, or a little jelly or marmalade, then press the rice over the hole again; then dip in breadcrumbs, after in egg, and lastly in crumbs, and fry.
Two sweet croquettes from the Waldorf's larder, both built on the same principle: a stiff, cooled paste, a double breading, and a fast fry. Neither will succeed if the base mixture is loose.
- The apple marmaladeThe cross-reference is presumably to a thick apple paste rather than a loose jam: apples cooked down with sugar until the mass pulls away from the pan and holds a shape when cooled. If it slumps on the spoon it will burst in the fat. Chill it thoroughly before shaping.
- Rice measuresHalf a pint of rice is one cup, cooked in two cups of liquid. Short or medium-grain rice gives the starch needed to bind; long-grain will crumble when you shape it.
- Breading orderThe rice recipe consistently gives crumbs, then egg, then crumbs again; the apple paragraph stops at a second dip in egg and does not say to re-crumb, which it plainly needs. Crumbs or flour first if the surface is sticky, then egg, then crumbs, and for these a second egg-and-crumb coat is what keeps hot fruit paste from leaking. Chill the breaded croquettes 20 to 30 minutes before frying.
- Frying fat and temperature"Very best lard" means simply a good, clean-tasting lard; the text does not specify which grade. Any neutral fat at 350-365F works; below that the crumb soaks, above it the coating colours before the centre warms through.
- "Boiling fat"Fat never boils. Nineteenth-century cooks used the phrase for fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around a dropped crumb, which is roughly the same 350-375F range.
- Sifted sugarA fine sugar, most likely powdered or icing sugar. To flavour it with orange, rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers and let it dry an hour, or sift in a little dried ground zest; orange juice will only clump it.
- Rice croquette cookingHalf an hour of steaming assumes a slow simmer with the lid on. Check at 20 minutes; the rice should be soft to the point of collapse, since any bite left in the grain shows as grittiness in the finished croquette.
- Yield and servingThe rice mixture will make roughly eight to ten oval croquettes. Both are sweet dishes, served hot and eaten within minutes of draining.
Sweet croquettes belonged to the standard repertoire of the grand hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, when a fried, breaded shape of rice, semolina or fruit paste was a cheap and showy way to close a meal or fill out a course. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, put his name to a cook book of 1896 drawn on the practice of that kitchen, and the French bones show plainly here: the apple paste shaped into pears echoes confectionery, where fruit pastes were often moulded to imitate the fruit they came from. The instruction to pile them pyramid-fashion on a folded napkin is period service — the napkin caught stray fat — and piling fried things high was a common presentation of the day.