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Salmon Croquettes
Finely chop one pound of salmon; mix two tablespoonfuls of flour and one tablespoonful of butter together; boil one-half pint of cream; mix the butter, flour and salmon in with it, and stir all over the fire for a minute. Work in a well-beaten egg with the above ingredients, remove them from the fire, and leave them until they are cold. Shape the mixture into croquettes, dip them in beaten egg then in bread-crumbs, and fry them in boiling fat. When cooked, drain the croquettes, place them on an ornamental dish paper or a folded napkin spread on a hot dish, garnish with slices of lemon and serve.
A classic croquette built on a thick cream binding rather than potato or breadcrumb, which makes the chilling step non-negotiable. Read it as a scaled-down béchamel that happens to contain a pound of fish.
- The hinge: chill it hardThe mixture as written is loose and will slump the moment it hits the fat. Spread it in a shallow pan, cover, and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight until it is firm enough to shape without sticking.
- Which salmonOscar does not say. Cooked fish — poached leftovers or good tinned salmon, picked over for skin and bone — is the likeliest reading, and it gives the drier, flakier interior the recipe expects; the wording can also be read as raw salmon chopped fine, which the brief cooking and the frying would finish.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup. Use heavy or whipping cream; the fat is what keeps the binding smooth. A pound of fish to one cup of cream is a firm ratio, so do not be tempted to add more liquid.
- Butter and flour proportionsTwo tablespoons flour to one of butter is deliberately flour-heavy — it is a stiff binding, not a sauce. Cook the paste in the boiling cream a full minute or two, stirring, or the croquettes will taste of raw flour.
- Working in the eggTake the pan off direct heat first and beat the egg in quickly, or it will scramble in visible threads. One large egg is right; a second egg is used for the coating, not the mixture.
- "Boiling fat"The phrase means deep fat at frying heat; cooking fats smoke and break down long before they would actually boil. Aim for roughly 360-375F. Fry in batches so the temperature holds, three to four minutes to a deep gold, and drain on a rack rather than letting them sit in their own oil.
- Yield and servingProbably eight to ten croquettes, enough for four as a lunch or first course. The ornamental paper and folded napkin absorbed fat at table as much as they dressed the dish; a warm plate and the lemon serve much the same purpose.
Croquettes were one of the great economies of the late nineteenth-century hotel kitchen: a thick cream binding turned yesterday's poached salmon or a tin of it into something that could be sent out under a napkin with lemon and passed off as a course in its own right. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and by the 1890s the form had spread through American cookbooks in every conceivable filling — chicken, sweetbread, rice, lobster. Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel whose name fronts this 1896 collection, worked at a moment when tinned Pacific salmon had become cheap and ubiquitous in the East, and dishes like this one sat comfortably between the Waldorf's dining room and the household kitchens that bought his book.