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Chicken Croquettes
To be creamy inside these must be made very soft, then the mixture set away to cool and stiffen before it is shaped into croquettes. Make a white sauce No. 4 (see page 68). Chop the chicken fine and season-with salt, pepper, grated lemon rind, a few drops of onion-juice, grating of nutmeg, and a little mace. Put into the hot sauce all the seasoned chicken it will take up, about two cups to one of sauce. Set away to cool. Then shape into croquettes, roll in fine bread-crumbs, then in egg (which has been slightly beaten together with one tablespoonful of cold water), being careful to have every part covered with egg, then in crumbs again. Fry in smoking deep fat, and serve with white sauce No. 2 (see page 68). Veal or fresh pork may be used instead of chicken.
A classic bound-croquette method: a very thick white sauce holds finely chopped cooked chicken, chilled hard, shaped, double-crumbed and deep fried. Nearly everything depends on the chilling.
- Chill without shortcutsThe mixture must be genuinely cold and stiff before shaping, which means several hours or overnight in the refrigerator, spread in a shallow pan so it cools quickly. Warm mixture will not hold a shape and will burst in the fat.
- The two white saucesThe recipe calls for two different sauces from page 68: No. 4 to bind the chicken and No. 2 to serve with it. Neither is reproduced here, so treat No. 4 as a thick binding sauce and No. 2 as a thinner pouring sauce rather than guessing quantities.
- ProportionsTwo cups chopped chicken to one cup of thick sauce is what the recipe gives; the instruction to put in "all the seasoned chicken it will take up" means the meat should be barely bound, not swimming. Too much sauce gives a pasty croquette, too little and they fall apart.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid, or press grated onion in a sieve. A few drops go a long way; a teaspoon of very finely grated onion is a reasonable substitute.
- Mace and nutmegMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, milder and more floral. Ground mace is still sold; a pinch is enough alongside the nutmeg, and both are easy to overdo in a pale sauce.
- Breading orderCrumb, egg, crumb as written — the first coat of crumbs gives the wet mixture something to grip. Any bare patch will leak in the fat, so pinch and re-crumb any thin spots, then chill the shaped croquettes again for 30 minutes before frying.
- "Smoking deep fat"Modern oils should not actually smoke. Fry at 375F; the croquettes are already cooked through and need only three to four minutes to brown and heat. Fry in batches so the oil does not drop below 350F.
- YieldTwo cups of chopped chicken with a cup of sauce should make roughly eight to ten croquettes, depending on size; the recipe gives no yield or serving number.
Croquettes were a common genteel answer to cooked meat in American and English kitchens in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the technique — cooked meat bound in a stiff sauce, chilled, crumbed and fried — belongs to the French-influenced cookery widely copied in American cookbooks after the Civil War. The seasoning here is characteristic of the period: lemon rind, onion juice, nutmeg and mace, flavourings long associated with white meat and cream sauces in Anglo-American cookery. The closing note that veal or fresh pork may be substituted shows the method mattering more than the meat.