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Hominy Croquettes
Place one pint of cooked hominy in a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of hot milk and stir it over the fire till hot. Remove from the fire, mix a beaten yolk of an egg with it, season to taste with salt, and leave till cool. Shape the mixture into croquettes, then roll them in breadcrumbs, heat a lump of butter in a fryingyan, put in the croquettes and fry them. When browned, drain, lay them on a napkin, and serve.
A simple side dish from the Waldorf's kitchen, and one that hinges entirely on how stiff and how cold the hominy mixture is before it goes into the fat.
- Chill, don't just cool"Leave till cool" is the weak point. Spread the mixture on a plate and refrigerate at least an hour, until it is firm enough to hold a shape without slumping; a warm mixture will break apart in the pan.
- What hominy means hereWhole hulled corn treated with alkali, sold canned or dried; drain and coarsely mash canned hominy before measuring. Cooked grits or coarse hominy grits give a smoother croquette and work as a substitute.
- A pint of cooked hominyTwo cups, measured after cooking and draining, not dry. Expect roughly eight croquettes, enough for four as a vegetable course.
- Breadcrumbs alone won't stickStandard practice is flour, then beaten egg, then crumbs. Rolling a moist mixture straight in dry crumbs, as written, gives a patchy coat that sheds in the fat unless the croquettes are very cold and the crumbs fine and dry.
- The butterWhole butter over the heat needed to brown a croquette will scorch. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, holds up; keep the pan at a steady medium and turn the croquettes once.
- Season more than you expectHominy is bland and takes salt heavily. A grating of nutmeg or white pepper, and a spoonful of grated Parmesan, are period-appropriate and worth adding.
- DrainingThe napkin is doing what a wire rack does now. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the crust does not steam soft underneath.
Hominy — hulled corn softened with wood ash or lime, a technique taken up from Indigenous cooks of the Americas — was a staple of the American table long before it appeared on a luxury hotel menu, and croquettes were a common way a professional kitchen of the period turned a leftover starch into a course that could be plated with a napkin under it. The pattern is French in form: bind a cooked starch with egg yolk, chill, shape, crumb, fry, and serve as a garnish to game or roast meats. Recipes of the 1890s and 1900s often treat hominy, rice, semolina and potato interchangeably in this role, which may be why the instructions here are so terse — the method would already have been familiar to a trained cook.