No. 885

Game, Chicken or Fat Liver Croquettes, Dauphine

Croquettes de Gibier, de Volaille ou de Foies-gras a la Dauphine

Remove the fillets either from some game or chicken (or replace them by some fat livers), suppress all skin and nerves and chop them up finely, then pound in a mortar and add one pint of veloute (No. 415), and one ounce of butter with some essence of mushrooms (No. 392) worked into it, pass it through a tammy being careful to have the puree more consistent than liquid. Break separately in a bowl, eight egg-yolks and one whole egg for each quart of puree, add this and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Butter some molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), fill them with the preparation, and poach them in a slow oven; let get cold, then unmold, and roll them in beaten eggs and bread-crumbs, and fry to a good color, dress, range them on folded napkins and garnish with fried parsley. These croquettes may be made by mixing half foies-gras with either the chicken or game.

← No. 884 Frog or Oyster Croquettes Hot Side Dishes No. 886 Grouse Croquettes with Tomatoed Soubise Sauc →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's croquettes are not the usual bound-and-chilled mixture: the forcemeat is set with egg like a custard, poached in molds, then chilled, breaded and fried. Get the poach right and the rest follows.

The hinge: gentle heat"poach them in a slow oven" calls for low, steady heat; the recipe gives no temperature and does not mention a water bath, though a bain-marie is the usual way of keeping such a poach gentle. The egg-bound puree must set to a firm, sliceable custard; too fierce an oven curdles it and it will weep fat and break apart in the fryer.
Proportions are incompleteThe original gives a pint of veloute and an ounce of butter but never says how much fillet meat. Work toward a puree that mounds on a spoon rather than pours "more consistent than liquid" is the only guide given, and it is the real measure.
Egg ratioEight yolks plus one whole egg per quart of finished puree. If you scale down to a pint of puree, that is four yolks and roughly half a beaten whole egg.
Veloute and mushroom essenceNo. 415 is a white stock sauce thickened with blond roux, reduced until thick. "Essence of mushrooms" (No. 392) is mushroom trimmings and stock reduced hard to a concentrate; a modern substitute is a few tablespoons of heavily reduced mushroom cooking liquor, or duxelles pressed through a sieve.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force puree through. A drum sieve, or a food processor followed by a fine chinois, does the same work.
Fat livers"Foies-gras" here means raw duck or goose liver, not the cooked terrine sold in tins. Raw lobes are deveined, pureed and used as the body of the mixture; tinned mousse is already seasoned and set and will not behave the same way.
Molds and fryingSmall buttered dariole or timbale molds of about 2 fl oz work. Chill the poached shapes thoroughly before breading, and fry at 350-375F only until the crumb colors, three minutes or so, since the interior is already cooked.
YieldDepending on mold size, a quart of puree might give something like sixteen to twenty small croquettes. Ranhofer files the dish under "Hot Side Dishes."
Fried parsleyDry the sprigs completely and drop them into hot fat for a few seconds; wet parsley spits violently. The folded napkin was there to absorb frying fat at table.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry is a good example of the book's habit of collapsing several dishes into one number: game, chicken or foie gras, any of which could be made to order from what the larder held. The name "a la Dauphine" is used loosely in nineteenth-century French cookery, most often for preparations bound and enriched to a delicate consistency; today it usually calls to mind the potato-and-choux pommes dauphine, which shares the idea of a soft mixture shaped and deep-fried rather than any direct lineage. What marks this version as high restaurant work is the poaching step: rather than chilling a thick sauce until it can be handled, Ranhofer sets the forcemeat with egg yolks in molds, giving a smoother and more uniform interior than the ordinary croquette, at the cost of waiting for the molds to get cold. Croquettes of this kind filled the entree and hot side-dish slots of a long service menu.