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Oyster Croquettes
Blanch six dozen oysters, trim and chop the meat into small pieces, put these into a saucepan with one-third the bulk of mushrooms cooked and cut into small pieces. Set one pint of bechamel sauce in a saucepan over a clear fire, reduce it, stirring frequently, add a few tablespoonfuls of the oyster liquor and a little cream. When it is well reduced and begins to froth, add a liaison made of the yolks of three eggs to thicken it, and lastly add a small quantity of butter. Stir in the oyster mixture, turn it out into a basin, and let it get quite cold, placing the basin if necessary on ice. Take out small quantities, about the size of an egg, roll them on a board sprinkled with breadcrumbs, make them round with spoons, and dip them first into well beaten egg and then into breadcrumbs. Have ready a fryingpan of boiling fat, plunge them in a few at a time, and when they are done and of a good color take them out, drain, arrange them on a napkin spread over a dish, and serve with a garnish of fried parsley.
A classic French croquette worked around oysters, written for a brigade that had bechamel and cooked mushrooms already standing by. The whole thing turns on one point: the panada-like oyster mixture must be reduced thick and then chilled hard, or the croquettes will burst in the fat.
- Blanching the oystersBlanch means a brief plunge in their own liquor until the edges just ruffle, 30 seconds to a minute, no more. Oysters held longer tighten into rubber, and they will cook again inside the croquette. Save the liquor; the recipe calls for it later.
- LiaisonA liaison is simply egg yolks used as a thickener. Temper them with a spoonful of the hot sauce first, then stir them in off direct heat. Once the yolks are in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle.
- Bechamel and reductionOne pint of bechamel should be reduced to a very stiff sauce, thick enough to hold a trench when the spoon is drawn through it, before the oysters go in. "Begins to froth" probably describes a sauce reduced far enough that the bubbles no longer break freely. Under-reduce and no amount of chilling will save the shaping.
- Chilling is not optionalSpread the mixture in a shallow pan rather than a deep basin so it cools faster; the recipe asks only that it get quite cold, over ice if need be. Chill it until firm right through. A cold, firm mixture is the main reason a breaded croquette holds its shape in hot fat.
- Frying fat and temperature"Boiling fat" means deep fat hot enough to brown quickly, roughly 350 to 375F. Fry three or four at a time so the temperature does not crash, two to three minutes, until deep gold; the filling is already cooked, so you are only heating through and setting the crust.
- A double coating helpsThe instruction to roll the portions on a crumbed board, then egg, then crumbs, is doing the work of a modern flour-egg-crumb sequence. If the mixture is at all soft, egg and crumb them twice and chill again before frying.
- Fried parsleyFlat-leaf or curly parsley, well dried, dropped into the same fat for a few seconds until it stops spitting and turns brittle-bright green. Wet parsley in hot fat spatters violently; pat it thoroughly dry first.
- YieldSix dozen oysters with mushrooms and a reduced pint of sauce gives roughly 18 to 20 egg-sized croquettes, enough for eight or ten as a first course. The mixture halves without trouble.
Croquettes were the great utility dish of late nineteenth-century hotel cookery: a stiff reduced sauce bound with egg yolks, loaded with whatever good protein the kitchen had, chilled, breaded and fried to order. Oysters were still cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast in the 1890s and appeared on New York menus raw, stewed, scalloped, fried and creamed; turning them into croquettes let a kitchen serve them hot, portioned and identical to a large room. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the technique here is textbook Escoffier-era practice, with the liaison of yolks and the garnish of fried parsley both standard finishing moves of the period rather than anything particular to the house.