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Croquettes
2 cups beef, veal, chicken, or lobster 2 tablespoonfuls but ter 4 tablespoonfuls flour Dash of cayenne (with Stock) 1 cup stock 2 teaspoonfuls lemonjuice Salt and pepper Cook flour in hot butter, add stock gradually, and boil up well. Season meat highly with salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon-juice, and put into stock. When almost to boiling-point, remove from fire and set aside to cool. Shape into balls. If too soft to handle add fine-sifted bread-crumbs; do not add flour for stiffening croquettes. Roll in crumbs, in egg, in crumbs again, and fry in smoking-hot fat two minutes.
A standard croquette formula: a very thick white sauce bound with cooked meat, chilled firm, breaded and fried. Everything depends on the binding sauce being stiff enough and the mixture being properly cold.
- The hinge is the chillFour tablespoons of flour to one cup of stock makes a panada, not a gravy, and it will still be soft while warm. Spread the mixture in a shallow pan and refrigerate at least two hours, or until it is firm enough to cut, before shaping. Warm mixture bursts in the fat.
- Chop, do not cubeThe recipe gives no size for the meat, but it must be already cooked, since it is only brought to near boiling. Grind or finely mince it; pieces larger than a pea break the coating and let fat in. Lobster can stay slightly coarser.
- Frying temperature"Smoking-hot fat" is a visual cue rather than a measurement. Use 375F. Below that the crumbs soak; much above and the crust colours before the interior is hot. Two minutes is right at that temperature, and the filling is already cooked.
- Breading orderThe instruction to roll in crumbs, then egg, then crumbs again is deliberate. The first light dusting gives the egg something to grip on a moist surface. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water so it coats thinly, and let the breaded croquettes rest 20 minutes in the refrigerator to set the shell.
- Do not add flourThe warning is sound. Raw flour stirred into a cold croquette mixture never cooks out and tastes pasty. Dry fine crumbs stiffen it without that.
- StockUse a well-reduced meat or shellfish stock, not water with a cube. This is the only liquid in the dish and it carries most of the flavour; a weak stock gives a bland, floury interior.
- Cayenne and lemonSeason the mixture more aggressively than tastes right at the stove. Cold, fried starch mutes seasoning considerably, and "season highly" is the author being literal.
- YieldTwo cups of meat makes about ten croquettes, or four servings. A cream sauce, tomato sauce or peas are common accompaniments.
Croquettes were among the techniques of nineteenth-century leftover cookery, and books of this kind treat them as a default destination for any cold roast. The name is French, from croquer, to crunch, and the form is generally associated with professional French kitchens, where a thick béchamel or velouté panada was the standard binder for chopped meat. What makes the form so useful to a thrift cookbook is its indifference to the raw material: the same proportions absorb beef, veal, chicken or lobster, and the interchangeable list at the head of this recipe is the whole argument for it. Deep frying at home was becoming routine as cast-iron ranges and cheap rendered fat made a kettle of hot lard practical, and croquettes, rissoles and fritters filled the pages of household manuals for the rest of the century.