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Chicken Croquettes
Take two chickens weighing about three pounds each, put them into a saucepan with water to cover, add two onions and carrots, a small bunch of parsley and thyme, a few cloves and half a grated nutmeg, and boil until the birds are tender; then remove the skin, gristle and sinews and chop the meat as fine as possible. Put into a saucepan one pound of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour, stir over the fire for a few minutes and add half a pint of the liquor the chickens were cooked in and one pint of rich cream, and boil for eight or ten minutes, stirring continually. Remove the pan from the fire, season with salt, pepper, grated nutmeg and a little powdered sweet marjoram, add the chopped meat and stir well. Then stir in rapidly the yolks of four eggs, place the saucepan on the fire for a minute, stirring well, turn the mass onto a dish, spread it out and let it get cold. Cover the hands with flour and form the preparation into shapes, dip them into egg beaten with cream, then in sifted breadcrumbs and let them stand for half an hour or so to dry; then fry them a delicate color after plunging into boiling lard. Take them out, drain, place on a napkin on a dish and serve. The remainder of the chicken stock may be used for making consomme or soup.
Chicken Croquettes, Perigourdin Prepare some croquettes composed of chicken, mushrooms, two truffles cut into small square pieces and one ounce of cooked smoked tongue in small pieces. Fry them for four minutes, and serve. Heat half a pint of Madeira sauce, add to it one chopped truffle and six chopped mushrooms. Cook for five minutes, and serve in a sauceboat.
Chicken Croquettes, Queen Style Make a croquette preparation of chicken and mushroom, roll it into eight cork shaped pieces, dip each one separately in beaten egg and then into breadcrumbs. Fry them in very hot fat for four minutes, drain thoroughly and place them on a hot dish over a folded napkin. Serve with half a pint of hot Queen sauce in a sauceboat.
A classic hotel croquette: poached chicken bound in a very thick, egg-enriched cream sauce, chilled solid, then breaded and deep-fried. Two of the quantities need thought before you start.
- The hinge: the paste must be cold and stiffCroquettes fail at the fryer, not the stove. Spread the mixture no more than an inch deep, cover the surface, and refrigerate several hours or overnight until it can be cut rather than scooped. A soft paste bursts its crust in the fat.
- The butter-to-flour ratio is wrong as printedThe butter-to-flour ratio looks anomalous — One pound of butter to two tablespoons of flour is unlikely to thicken a pint and a half of liquid into a paste stiff enough to mould, even with four yolks to help. Whether this is a misprint or simply an unusually rich period proportion cannot be settled from the page. If you want a workable panada, cook out roughly equal weights of butter and flour — about 4 oz of each — before the stock and cream go in.
- Half a pint, one pintHalf a pint, one pint — if these are American measures, half a pint is one cup of the poaching liquor and a pint is two cups of cream; on British measure they would be 10 and 20 fl oz. Nothing in the text settles which is meant, so judge by the consistency of the sauce as it cooks.
- Boiling the birdsTwo 3 lb chickens covered in water take roughly an hour at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, which toughens the breast. Pull them when a thigh joint moves freely; the breast can come out earlier if you want it moist.
- Tempering the yolksFour yolks stirred into a near-boiling sauce will scramble if dumped in. Slacken them with a ladle of the hot mixture first, then return everything to low heat for under a minute — just long enough to set, never to boil.