No. 883

Fish Croquettes

Croquettes de Poisson

The Fish Croquettes may be prepared with either salmon, trout, sole, bass, kingfish sheepshead, or red snapper. Simply cut up the meat into small three-sixteenths of an inch squares; lay them in a vessel and mix in a third of their quantity of cooked mushrooms, and half as many truffles as there are mushrooms, all cut into the same sized pieces. Put on the fire to boil a few gills of good, consistent bechamel (No. 409); mix into it slowly the mushroom liquor and a few spoonfuls of good melted glaze (No. 402), and when the sauce has become succulent, add the salpicon in the saucepan; heat it without boiling, and spread it over a tin sheet to become hard, leaving it for a few hours in a cool place or on the ice. Divide the preparation into balls, an inch and a half in diameter, lay them on a table bestrewn with white bread-crumbs, and roll them either in the shape of corks or balls; dip them in beaten eggs and roll them in the bread-crumbs; smooth well the surfaces with the blade of a knife, then range them on a tin sheet; put them in hot frying fat; cook only a few at a time and let them get a nice color. After the croquettes are finished and well drained from the fat, range them in pyramid-form over a folded napkin, and garnish around with fried parsley.

← No. 882 Pullet Croquettes, Wright Sanford Hot Side Dishes No. 884 Frog or Oyster Croquettes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have his béchamel and meat glaze already made, and that you know a salpicon must be bound stiff enough to cut. The whole dish stands or falls on how thick the sauce is and how cold the mixture gets before shaping.

The hinge: a very thick binderRanhofer calls for a "consistent" bechamel, meaning a thick binding sauce rather than a pouring one; he gives no ratio, but something like a cup of milk to 3 tablespoons each butter and flour, cooked out until it pulls from the pan, is the modern equivalent. A loose binder gives croquettes that burst in the fat, and no amount of chilling will save them.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so "a few gills" is roughly 1 to 1 cups of finished sauce. Ranhofer gives no weight of fish, so judge by eye: add the sauce a little at a time; the salpicon should just hold together, not swim.
Glaze (No. 402)Ranhofer's glaze is stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid when cold. A tablespoon or two of reduced fish fumet or a commercial demi-glace concentrate does the same job: it is there for savour and body, not liquid.
Fish choicesSheepshead and kingfish are still caught but rarely sold outside their regions; any firm fish works, and Ranhofer's own list runs from salmon and trout to sole and snapper. Croquettes were a common way of using cooked fish, though he does not say so here; either way the recipe wants neat dice rather than flakes.
Truffles and mushroom liquorThe truffle is optional in a way it was not at Delmonico's; a small amount of finely diced mushroom stem or a few drops of truffle oil stirred in off the heat approximates the perfume. The mushroom liquor is the strained cooking liquid from the mushrooms and should be reduced before it goes into the sauce, or it will thin the binder.
Three-sixteenths of an inchThat is a scant ¼-inch dice, small enough that the pieces read as texture rather than chunks. Cutting cooked fish this size is easier if it is chilled firm first.
Chilling is not optional"A few hours in a cool place or on the ice" means the tray goes into the refrigerator until the mass is cold and firm enough to divide and shape; a few hours, as he says, and overnight does no harm. Warm mixture cannot be shaped or breaded cleanly.
Frying fatDeep fat at 350–375°F, a few croquettes at a time so the temperature does not crash. They need only two or three minutes: everything inside is already cooked, and the object is colour and a set crust.
Fried parsleyParsley must be bone dry before it goes into hot fat, and it takes seconds. Wet sprigs will spit violently.
YieldRanhofer gives no quantities, but about 1 lb of fish with its garnish and sauce would make roughly 16 to 18 croquettes of the size given, serving six to eight as a hot side dish or four as a main.

A Little History

This is Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the croquette section runs to dozens of numbered variations because the form was the great utility dish of the nineteenth-century professional kitchen — a way of turning yesterday's poached salmon or roast pullet into something that could be sent out of a grand kitchen without apology. The technique is French: a salpicon, meaning ingredients cut small and bound in sauce, chilled until firm, then breaded and fried, a method generally traced to the eighteenth-century French repertoire. Ranhofer's cross-references to numbered béchamel and glaze recipes show how the book was meant to be used, as a working system rather than a set of standalone dishes. The serving instruction — pyramid on a folded napkin, fried parsley around — is characteristic nineteenth-century grand-kitchen presentation, when a side dish was expected to arrive built rather than merely plated.