No. 2863

Hard-Boiled Egg Croquettes

Croquettes d'Œufs Durs

Chop twelve cold hard-boiled eggs in three-sixteenths inch squares, also half a pound of mushrooms the same size. Reduce a quart of bechamel (No. 409), season and add to it a little meat glaze (No. 402) and chopped truffles, mix in the egg salpicon and take off at the first boil. When this preparation is cold form it into croquettes, either round, cylindrical or flat ovals; immerse them in eggs, roll in bread-crumbs and fry to a fine color; drain, salt and serve on a folded napkin with sprigs of fried parsley on top.

← No. 2862 Hard-Boiled Eggs a la Washburn Eggs & Omelets No. 2864 Hard-Boiled Eggs, New York Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's croquette formula is sound but assumes a professional larder: béchamel by the quart, meat glaze, truffles, and a cook who knows that the binding must be stiff. A few conversions and one non-negotiable step make it workable at home.

The hinge: the panade must be very thick and very coldA quart of ordinary pouring béchamel will never hold a croquette. Reduce it hard until it mounds on the spoon and pulls away from the pan, then spread it in a shallow tray and chill at least four hours, ideally overnight. Warm or loose filling bursts in the fryer.
Scale it downTwelve eggs and a quart of sauce gives roughly 24 to 30 croquettes, enough for a dozen people as a course. A third of the recipe is a sensible household batch.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm. Ranhofer means a true salpicon of even dice, not a mash. Cut the whites by hand and crumble the yolks in separately, or the yolks turn to paste under the knife.
Béchamel No. 409 and glaze No. 402The book's béchamel is a period white sauce built on a white roux; any well-made thick béchamel serves. Meat glaze is stock reduced to a syrup — glace de viande, sold now as a concentrate; a teaspoon or two is enough, and it is salty, so taste before adding more salt.
Mushrooms and trufflesCook the diced mushrooms dry in a hot pan first to drive off their water, otherwise they loosen the panade as it chills. Truffle is optional in the sense that its absence costs flavour, not structure; a spoonful of truffle paste or a few reconstituted dried slices stands in.
"Take off at the first boil"The moment the mixture bubbles, pull it from the heat. Prolonged boiling after the eggs go in makes the whites tough and squeaky.
Breading and fryingFlour, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs; a second pass through egg and crumbs is cheap insurance. Fry at 350-360F for two to three minutes, until deep gold — the interior only needs heating through.
Fried parsleyUse dry, whole sprigs of curly parsley and lower them into the fat for about ten seconds, standing back, as wet parsley spits violently. They should stay bright green, not brown.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working system set down in some three and a half thousand numbered entries that cross-reference one another — hence the bare pointers to No. 409 and No. 402 here rather than repeated instructions. The croquette itself is a thoroughly French device: a cold, stiff sauce-bound salpicon, breaded and fried, and by the late nineteenth century it was often a convenient way a restaurant kitchen turned trimmings and cooked leftovers into a saleable course. Hard-boiled eggs may well have been that kind of surplus in a house that poached and shirred eggs to order all morning. The folded napkin and the crown of fried parsley are the period's conventional service for anything deep-fried, the linen absorbing residual fat while the dish went to table.