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Sweet-Potato Croquettes
Put through a meat grinder, using the finest cutter, enough cold boiled sweet potatoes to make one and one-half cups. Add one tablespoonful melted butter, half a tablespoonful brown sugar, beaten yolk of one egg, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and mace to taste. Mix well together, make into small croquettes, roll in fine crumbs, in egg, and in crumbs again. Fry in deep fat.
A straightforward way to use up boiled sweet potatoes; the only real difficulty is getting the croquettes to hold together in the fat.
- The hinge: chill before fryingThe mixture is soft and the original gives no resting time. Shape the croquettes, breadcrumb them, and refrigerate at least 30 minutes so they set; warm, loose croquettes split open and absorb fat.
- Meat grinderThe finest cutter of a hand grinder gives a smooth, slightly compacted puree. A food mill or ricer does the same job; a food processor can overwork the starch and turn the puree gluey, so it is best avoided.
- Fat temperatureDeep fat for croquettes wants 365-375F. Below that they soak; much above and the crumbs colour before the inside heats through. Two to three minutes, turning once, is enough since everything inside is already cooked.
- Breading orderCrumbs, egg, crumbs is what the original says, and it is worth following as written: a first light dusting of crumbs gives the egg something to grip on damp puree. Beat the egg with a teaspoon of water so it coats thinly.
- MaceStill sold, though rarely stocked; it is the lacy outer covering (aril) of the nutmeg seed, and its flavour is close to nutmeg's, generally reckoned more delicate. Nutmeg is the usual substitute, used sparingly.
- Seasoning to tasteWith a raw egg yolk in the mix you cannot taste as you go. Season the potato before adding the yolk, or fry a small test croquette first.
- YieldA cup and a half of purée makes roughly eight small croquettes — two servings as a side dish.
Croquettes were a mainstay of American and English household cookery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and books of this kind often treated them as the destination for cold cooked food: a binder, a coating, hot fat, and yesterday's dinner reappears as something that looks intentional. Sweet potatoes suited the form well, since their sugar and starch help the mixture bind without the thick panada of flour and milk that a meat croquette requires. The brown sugar, cinnamon, and mace point to the long-standing American habit of treating the sweet potato as something between a vegetable and a dessert, a tradition usually traced to Southern kitchens and visible in everything from candied yams to sweet-potato pie. Left-over cookery of this period was often framed in moral terms -- thrift as a virtue of good management rather than a sign of poverty -- and a dish like this one let a cook demonstrate both economy and skill in the same serving.