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Potato Croquettes
Take finely mashed potato and mix through it sufficient salt, pepper, and butter to season well, with sweet milk or cream to moisten; mix thoroughly with this one beaten egg, and then make up into small rolls, being careful to have the surface perfectly smooth. Have ready one plate with a beaten egg upon it, and another with cracker crumbs. Dip each roll into the egg and then into the crumbs, and fry of a rich golden brown in hot lard. Lay the croquettes on brown paper first, and serve on a napkin.
A straightforward deep-fried potato croquette, and the technique still works. The only real difficulty is the one the original glosses over: the potato mixture must be stiff enough to hold together in hot fat.
- Get the potato dryUse a starchy baking potato, and add milk or cream sparingly "to moisten" only — a wet mash will burst in the fat. Baking the potatoes rather than boiling them, or drying boiled ones in the pan for a minute, gives a mixture that holds its shape.
- Chill before fryingThe recipe moves straight from shaping to frying. Twenty to thirty minutes in the refrigerator after breading firms the rolls and makes the crust adhere, which is the difference between croquettes and potato soup in the fryer.
- Cracker crumbsIn nineteenth-century kitchens this generally meant pounded soda or water crackers: plain, only lightly salted, fairly coarse. Unseasoned saltines crushed fine, or panko, give a similar crust; commercial seasoned breadcrumbs will fight the delicate seasoning.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as distinguished from the soured milk or buttermilk a period kitchen might also have. Whole milk or cream, a tablespoon or two at a time.
- "Hot lard"Deep-fry at 350–375F. Lard behaves well at that range; a neutral oil works equally well. Below 350F the croquettes soak fat, above 400F the crumbs darken before the interior heats through. Two to three minutes gives the "rich golden brown".
- Brown paper and napkinThe brown paper served as the period's paper towel, grocery wrapping used to blot fat. Draining on a rack or paper towels does the same thing. Fried dishes were often sent to table on a folded napkin, which also took up any fat left.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities. As a rough guide, about a pound and a half of potato bound with one egg will shape into roughly a dozen small rolls, enough for four as a side dish.
Croquettes arrived in American cookbooks from French practice, where the name is generally traced to croquer, to crunch, and by the 1870s they had become one of the standard ways of turning yesterday's food into today's dish. The Home Cook Book — first compiled in Chicago in 1874, with a later Canadian edition credited to "the ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" — belongs to the era of the community fundraising cookbook, where thrift and a little polish sat side by side. That is exactly this recipe: leftover mashed potato, an egg, and a napkin to serve it on. The section heading, "Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen," is one of the book's linking essays.