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Game Croquettes
Take the white flesh of any cold roasted game; melt a lump of butter in a stewpan and mix with it one scant tablespoonful of flour, then put in the minced game and season to taste with salt, pepper and a small quantity of nutmeg; stir over the fire until very hot, then move it to the side and mix in the beaten yolks of one or two eggs and the strained juice of half a lemon. Spread the mixture on a dish and leave it until nearly cold. Divide and mould the mixture into small balls, dip them in beaten eggs and roll in fine breadcrumbs sufficient to cover. Put a large piece of butter or clarified fat into a flat stewpan, place it on the fire, and when the fat boils put in the croquettes and fry them until nicely and equally browned. Spread a folded napkin on a hot dish, pile the croquettes on it, garnish with fried parsley, and serve.
Oscar's croquette is a two-day dish disguised as a quick one: the whole thing depends on the bound mixture being cold and firm before it is shaped. Everything else is technique you already have.
- The hinge: chill it hard"Leave it until nearly cold" is not enough for reliable moulding. Spread the mixture no more than an inch deep, cover, and refrigerate at least four hours or overnight; a cold, stiff paste is the difference between a croquette and a pan of loose hash.
- No liquid is given, and you need someA tablespoon of flour and butter with dry minced meat will not bind. Add stock, or stock and cream, to the roux and cook it thick before the meat goes in — roughly half a cup of sauce to every 2 cups of minced meat, so about three-quarters of a cup for the 1 lb suggested below.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. Reckon on the meat from one roast pheasant or two partridges, or about 1 lb of cold cooked meat, which makes 10 to 12 croquettes and serves four.
- Yolks off the heat"Move it to the side" means away from the direct fire. Beat the yolks in with the pan off the burner and the residual heat will set them; over a flame they scramble and the mixture goes grainy.
- Lemon lastThe acid goes in after the yolks. If you have enriched the sauce with cream as suggested above, adding acid earlier risks curdling it. Half a lemon is a good deal of juice for this volume; start with half of it and taste.
- Frying temperature"When the fat boils" means when it shimmers and a crumb sizzles briskly: 350–375F. Fat is not boiling at any point. Use enough to come halfway up the croquettes and turn them, or deep-fry outright.
- Fried parsleyFlat-leaf sprigs, absolutely dry, dropped into the hot fat for 15 to 20 seconds until crisp and still green. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- The napkinA folded napkin on the platter was common period service for fried dishes. A rack or paper does the same job.
- Game meatUse cooked pheasant, partridge, guinea fowl, duck or venison. If you are buying rather than shooting, farmed pheasant or a mix of duck and dark chicken meat gives the right flavour without the shot.
Croquettes were the great economy of the grand hotel kitchen, a way of turning trimmings and leftover meat into something that could be minced, bound and fried and sold again as a small hot course. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the technique — a stiff flour-and-butter sauce enriched with yolk, chilled, breaded and fried — was codified in nineteenth-century French professional cookery and carried into American hotels wholesale. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book is full of these bridging recipes, written for cooks who already knew the method and needed only the flavouring and the garnish. The fried parsley and folded napkin are period markers as much as the game itself: by the 1890s wild game was still a routine restaurant staple in New York, before the market-hunting trade was shut down and the birds on this list became things you had to shoot yourself or buy farmed.