No. 888

Lamb Croquettes a la de Rivas

Croquettes d'Agneau a la de Rivas

Take a pound of lean meat, free of nerves, from a tenderloin or leg of lamb, half a pound of mushrooms, and a quarter of a pound of red beef tongue; mingle these well with a pint of veloute (No. 415), and half a pint of fine tomato puree (No. 730); reduce well together, season, and set it aside to get cold; finish precisely the same as sweetbread croquettes (No. 893).

← No. 887 Guinea Fowl or Pullet Croquettes in Surprise Hot Side Dishes No. 889 Partridge Croquettes with Game Fumet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has velouté and tomato purée standing by, and he sends you to No. 893 for the shaping and frying. What follows fills in the parts he assumed you knew.

The hinge: reduce until it holds a lineThe mixture must be cooked down until a spoon drawn through the pan leaves a track that closes only slowly. A pint of velouté plus half a pint of tomato purée is far too loose as poured; undereduced, the croquettes will burst in the fat no matter how carefully you crumb them.
Cook the meat firstRanhofer's croquettes are generally a use for already-cooked meat, and this one is most easily made that way: roast or braised tenderloin or leg, trimmed of sinew and cut small. The recipe itself does not say whether the lamb is raw or cooked, nor how finely to cut it.
Red beef tongueThis means cured (brined) tongue, cooked, peeled and diced — the pink colour is from the cure, not the animal. Sold as pickled or corned tongue at a good butcher; a quarter pound is about 4 oz of finished meat, and it is there for salt and colour as much as bulk.
MushroomsHalf a pound of white or cremini, chopped and sautéed dry until their water has gone before they join the sauce. Added raw they will release liquid later and slacken the mixture you have just spent time tightening.
Velouté and tomato puréeNo. 415 is a white stock sauce thickened with blond roux; a good homemade chicken or veal velouté stands in. No. 730 is a reduced, sieved tomato sauce, not canned tomato paste — if substituting paste, thin it and taste, as paste is far more concentrated and sharper.
Chilling is not optionalSpread the mixture in a shallow tray, press film to the surface and refrigerate at least four hours, preferably overnight. Warm forcemeat cannot be shaped or breaded cleanly.
Finishing as at No. 893The recipe hands the shaping and frying over to the sweetbread croquettes at No. 893, which are moulded, egged and breadcrumbed, and fried in deep fat. In a modern kitchen that means fat hot enough to colour the crumb in two to three minutes without soaking it; everything inside is already cooked, so you are only crisping the shell and heating the centre.
YieldRoughly 16 to 18 croquettes, serving six to eight as a hot side dish or first course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised as a professional's cross-referenced system rather than a book of standalone recipes — hence the numbered pointers to velouté, tomato purée and the sweetbread croquettes whose method this one borrows wholesale. Croquettes occupied an entire genre in the nineteenth-century kitchen: a way of turning yesterday's roast into something that could be sent out on a doily with a napkin under it, given enough sauce and enough care. Ranhofer named dozens of dishes for the restaurant's patrons and public figures of the day, and "à la de Rivas" is generally taken to be one of those personal dedications rather than a description of any technique; the book gives no gloss on the name. The combination here — lamb, mushrooms, and cured tongue bound in a tomato-tinted velouté — is a fair sample of his habit of building depth from three or four cooked components rather than from long cooking of one.