No. 3016

Croquettes a la Trimalcion

Cut twelve apples in four, peel and core them, then cut into small dice; put them into a sautoir, pour over a few spoonfuls of butter and fry, and as soon as done remove from the fire and add a tablespoonful of sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, a handful of candied cherries cut in four and two spoonfuls of apricot marmalade (No. 3675); pour this on a baking sheet to cool off. Mold this preparation into inch and a quarter balls, shape them into cylindrical croquettes an inch in diameter, roll in cracker dust, dip in beaten eggs, then roll in bread-crumbs; smooth the breading with a knife and plunge the croquettes into hot frying fat; fry till they become a light golden color, then drain on a cloth; strew over powdered sugar and dress on a napkin. Serve with a saucetureen of cherry sauce prepared the same as for fried bananas with cherry sauce (No. 3003).

← No. 3015 Crescents of Noodles with Cherries Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3017 Croquettes of Chestnuts →

For the Modern Kitchen

A fried apple croquette from Ranhofer's dessert chapter: cooked apple bound with jam, breaded twice and deep-fried. The recipe's success rests entirely on how dry the apple mixture is before it is shaped.

The hinge: cook the apple dry"As soon as done" is doing a lot of work. The diced apple must be cooked past the point of tenderness until it is a thick, stiff paste with no free liquid in the pan, then spread thin on the sheet and chilled hard. A soft or wet mixture will not hold a cylinder and will burst in the fat.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan; any wide skillet or sauté pan works. Width matters more than depth here because you want moisture to evaporate.
"A few spoonfuls of butter"Genuinely vague in the original. Two to three tablespoons for twelve apples is enough to keep them from sticking; more only makes the mixture greasy and harder to bind.
ApplesTwelve apples is a large batch by modern standards, roughly 4 lb. A variety that breaks down, such as McIntosh or Bramley, will give a mixture stiff enough to mold, though the original does specify small dice.
Apricot marmalade (No. 3675)An apricot preserve rather than a citrus-style marmalade. Thick apricot jam, sieved and reduced in the pan for a minute if loose, is the working substitute; it helps bind, but the reduced apple does most of that work.
Cracker dustFinely crushed plain soda or water crackers. It is a dry first coat that lets the egg grip a moist filling; plain flour will do the same job.
Frying temperatureThe original says only 'hot frying fat'. In modern terms, roughly 350-375F suits a croquette this size: below that the breading soaks, above it the crust colors before the interior is warm. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop.
Yield and servingYield depends on how far the mixture is reduced; twelve apples will give upwards of two dozen croquettes at an inch and a quarter of mixture each. Dress on a folded napkin as written or on a paper-lined platter, dusted with powdered sugar, with the cherry sauce passed separately.

A Little History

The name is a literary joke. Trimalchio is the vulgar, spectacularly rich freedman whose banquet fills the best-known surviving stretch of Petronius's Satyricon, a first-century Roman feast of dishes disguised as other dishes — a hare fitted with wings, a hog carved to spill sausages. Naming a fried sweet after him may well have been meant to suggest that kind of trompe-l'oeil, though the book itself says nothing of the intent: a savory-looking breaded croquette that turns out to be spiced apple and candied cherry. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The Epicurean (1894) with such classical and courtly titles, partly because French haute cuisine of the period habitually named garnishes after patrons, places and figures from antiquity, and partly because a grand name was part of what a restaurant of that rank sold. The dish itself belongs to a large nineteenth-century family of sweet croquettes — rice, chestnut, semolina, fruit paste — that let a kitchen turn cooked leftovers into a hot entremets with nothing more than crumbs, egg and a fat kettle already at temperature.