No. 878

Chicken Croquettes, Hungarian

Croquettes de Poulets a la Hongroise

These are made with one pound of the white meat from a roast chicken, half a pound of mushrooms, and a quarter of a pound of unsmoked red beef tongue, each article cut into one-sixteenth of an inch squares. Put into a sautoire a pint and a half of Hungarian sauce (No. 479), thickened with egg-yolks and cream; when it nearly boils, stir in the chicken, mushrooms, and tongue; allow to boil a minute then cool; with this preparation form cork-shaped croquettes, dip them in beaten eggs and roll them in bread-crumbs, and then fry to a nice color. Dress on napkins and garnish with fried parsley.

← No. 877 Chicken Croquettes, Exquisite Hot Side Dishes No. 879 Crab Croquettes, Parmentier →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's croquette in the classic mould: a very thick sauce used as a binder for diced cooked meat, chilled hard, shaped, crumbed and fried. Nearly everything depends on the sauce being stiff enough and the mixture cold enough.

The hinge: chill it properlyThe mixture must be spread no more than an inch deep and refrigerated until firm all the way through, ideally overnight. Croquettes shaped from a merely cool mixture will split in the fat and empty themselves into the fryer.
Hungarian sauce (No. 479)Ranhofer's sauce is a paprika-flavoured velouté-type sauce; the recipe here is cross-referenced rather than printed, so consult No. 479 for the exact make-up. A modern equivalent is a paprika-scented béchamel or velouté cooked down until it mounds on the spoon; sweet Hungarian paprika, not smoked, is what is meant.
The egg-and-cream liaisonA pint and a half of sauce is a great deal of liquid for under two pounds of solids, so the sauce needs to be very thick before the yolks go in. The starch in a velouté protects the yolks to a degree, but if in doubt hold the pan just below a simmer rather than following the "boil a minute" literally; the residual heat is enough to bind.
Unsmoked red beef tongueThis is cured (brine and saltpetre) but unsmoked tongue, cooked and skinned, red rather than grey. Cooked pickled tongue from a deli is the closest thing; lean unsmoked cooked ham or mortadella substitutes acceptably for the colour and salt.
SautoireA shallow straight-sided sauté pan. Any wide heavy saucepan works; the width matters because you want fast evaporation while reducing the sauce.
Dice sizeOne-sixteenth of an inch is a fine brunoise and is not merely decorative here. Larger pieces make the croquettes crumble when cut and shaped.
MushroomsCook the half pound of mushrooms separately first and let their liquid evaporate entirely, or they will water down the binding sauce as the mixture chills.
FryingDeep fat at 350–375F, in small batches. The filling is already cooked, so you are only setting the crust; 2–3 minutes to a deep gold is enough.
Fried parsleyUse dry, well-drained curly parsley and stand back — any water on the leaves will make the fat spit. Ten seconds in the hot fat, then salt.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities make a substantial amount of mixture, enough for a hot side dish or first course for a party of several. The "napkins" are a folded linen liner on the platter to absorb fat; a paper-lined dish does the same work.

A Little History

This is No. 878 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the food he cooked as chef of Delmonico's in New York. Croquettes fill pages of the book because they suited a kitchen that roasted whole birds daily: white meat from roast chicken, bound in a rich sauce, becomes a dish that reads as luxury. The "à la hongroise" tag signals paprika, which entered fine French cooking through Austro-Hungarian channels in the later nineteenth century. The diced tongue is characteristic of the period too — a cured red meat used in small quantity for colour and savour, in the same spirit as the flecks of ham in a garnish.