Home › Left-Over Vegetables › Carrot Croquettes
Carrot Croquettes
1 cup cooked car- 1 cup white sauce No. rots 1 cup white sauce No.
1 cup cooked peas 1 egg 4 (see page 68) Salt, pepper, and grating of nutmeg Press the carrots and peas through a purée sieve.
They go through more easily if warm. Add seasoning, unbeaten egg, and white sauce, and set away to chill. Form into croquettes, roll in crumbs and egg, and fry in deep fat.
A thrifty way to use up yesterday's boiled carrots and peas, bound with a thick white sauce and fried. The ingredients are one cup each of cooked carrots and peas, one egg, and one cup of white sauce.
- The binding sauceThe recipe sends you to "white sauce No. 4" on page 68, which is not reproduced here; in books that number their white sauces, the higher numbers are generally the thicker, binding grades — likely something close to 4 tablespoons each butter and flour to a cup of milk, cooked until it leaves the side of the pan. An ordinary pouring béchamel will not hold a croquette together; if the mixture does not mound firmly on a spoon when cold, it will burst in the fat.
- Chilling is the hinge"Set away to chill" means chilling until the paste is cold and firm right through, which will take some hours. A cold, firm paste shapes cleanly and holds its skin in the fryer; a lukewarm one absorbs grease and collapses.
- Sieving the vegetablesA purée sieve is a fine wire sieve worked with a wooden pestle. A food mill or a ricer does the same job faster. A blender or processor will work but makes the mixture wetter and looser, so err on the thick side with the sauce.
- Peas and skinsPressing the peas through the sieve leaves the tough skins behind, which is the point of the step. If you skip sieving, expect a coarser croquette.
- Egg, unbeatenThe egg goes in whole and unbeaten as part of the paste, and a second beaten egg is needed for the coating. Budget two eggs in total.
- Breading orderAs written the order reads "crumbs and egg"; in practice coat crumbs, then beaten egg, then crumbs again. The double crumb gives a shell that will not leak.
- FryingThe recipe says only "fry in deep fat" and names no temperature; modern practice for croquettes is around 375°F, three or four at a time so the temperature holds. They need only a few minutes — everything inside is already cooked, and you are only setting the crust and heating through.
- YieldTwo cups of purée plus a cup of sauce gives roughly three cups of paste; the recipe states no yield, but that should make somewhere around eight small croquettes.
Croquettes were a standard solution to leftovers in American and English household cookery from the 1880s through the 1930s: anything cooked could be minced or sieved, stiffened with a heavy white sauce, chilled, crumbed and fried. The word comes from the French croquer, to crunch. The cross-reference to a numbered white sauce on page 68 points to a graded system of foundation sauces the cook was expected to have mastered before turning to individual dishes.