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Lamb Croquettes
Chop fine three pounds of raw lamb, peel and mince three onions, mix them all well together and season with pepper and salt. Divide the mixture into small quantities and roll them into balls, place them in a saucepan of water and boil. Put the yolks of four eggs in a saucepan with the strained juice of two lemons and one saltspoonful of salt, and beat well. Stir over a slow fire with a wooden spoon until it thickens, taking care to move it off the fire before the eggs have time to boil, or they will spoil by curdling; then mix in by degrees one teacupful of the liquor in which the meat balls were boiled, stir the sauce at the side of the fire for ten minutes, arrange the croquettes in a group in the center of a dish, pour the sauce round them, and serve while very hot.
Despite the name, nothing here is breaded or fried: these are poached lamb meatballs under an egg-and-lemon sauce. The sauce is where the dish is won or lost.
- The hinge: never let the sauce boilYolks and lemon juice thicken between roughly 160F and 180F and scramble not far above that. Work over the lowest heat, or over barely simmering water, and pull the pan the moment the sauce coats the spoon.
- Temper, do not dumpAdd the cup of hot cooking liquor a spoonful at a time, whisking constantly. Poured in at once it will cook the yolks on contact and no amount of stirring will bring them back.
- Saltspoonful and teacupfulA saltspoon is generally reckoned a quarter teaspoon. Period teacups are counted variously at four to six fluid ounces, so read the teacupful as somewhere between half and three-quarters of a cup of the cooking liquor.
- The meatThe recipe does not name a cut; 'chopped fine' amounts to a coarse grind, and shoulder is the sensible modern choice because it carries the fat the dish needs. Leg or a lean pre-packed grind will give dry, crumbly balls.
- Simmer, do not boilA rolling boil breaks the balls apart. Slide them into water at a bare shiver and hold it there for 15 to 20 minutes for balls the size of a walnut, until firm and cooked through.
- Season the poaching waterThat water becomes the sauce base, so salt it and consider an onion half, a bay leaf and a few peppercorns. Plain unsalted water gives a flat sauce.
- Bind if you want them tidyMeat and onion alone hold together only loosely. A handful of soft breadcrumbs or a little cooked rice worked into the mixture is traditional in related dishes and makes the balls easier to handle.
- Yield and servingThree pounds of lamb with the onions gives something on the order of 30 to 45 balls depending on how small they are rolled, enough for six as a main course. Serve immediately in warmed bowls; the sauce thins and can separate if it sits or is reheated.
The lemon-and-yolk sauce here is avgolemono, the Greek and wider eastern Mediterranean liaison that thickens broth with egg rather than flour or butter, and poached meatballs served in it are close to Greek youvarlakia, though those normally contain rice. Calling something neither breaded nor fried a croquette is loose usage, and French names were fashionable on American menus of the 1890s. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel whose name carried a Waldorf cookbook into print in 1896, drew on the hotel's working repertoire and on the wider international stock of dishes available to a New York luxury hotel; how this particular dish reached the book, and why it appears without a word about its origins, is not recorded.