Home › The World's Kitchen › Beef Croquettes, Piquante Sauce
Beef Croquettes, Piquante Sauce
Mince very finely all the lean beef left over from yesterday. Place it in a bowl and add half the quantity of bread crumbs. Chop very finely one medium white onion, place it in a saucepan with a teaspoon melted butter and lightly brown for six minutes; add it to the beef, with a tablespoon fresh chopped parsley and one bean chopped garlic. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Crack in two raw eggs and add one gill cream. Sharply mix with a wooden spoon for five minutes. Divide the preparation into twelve equal parts, roll them in flour, giving them nice croquette forms.
Heat in a large frying pan three tablespoons melted lard; place the croquettes in the pan, one beside another, and fry for four minutes on each side. Drain well and dress on a hot dish. Pour a hot piquante sauce over them, and serve.
A leftover-beef croquette from the era when cold roast was expected in every larder. The measurements are usable as written, with a few translations.
- A gill of creamHalf a cup (4 fl oz). With two eggs and half-volume breadcrumbs this makes a soft mixture; if it will not hold a shape, add breadcrumbs a spoonful at a time rather than reducing the cream at the start.
- A saltspoonAbout a quarter teaspoon. Nutmeg at that level is assertive in a beef mixture, which is the intention here.
- "One bean garlic""One bean chopped garlic" -- One clove. Probably a literal rendering of the French gousse (pod).
- Quantity of beefThe recipe is measured against yesterday's roast, so it gives no weight. Twelve croquettes of a decent size wants roughly 1 1/2 lb of cooked lean beef, with breadcrumbs at half the quantity of the minced meat, as the recipe directs.
- Mince, do not grind to pasteHand-chopped or coarsely ground beef keeps some texture; a food processor run too long gives a pasty croquette that tastes of nothing but nutmeg. Pulse briefly if you use one.
- The five minutes of sharp mixingThis is the hinge. Beating the egg and cream vigorously into the meat is what binds these without a panade or a heavy roux, and cutting it short is the usual reason croquettes break apart in the pan.
- Frying fat and heatThree tablespoons of lard in a wide pan is shallow frying, not deep. Medium-high heat; four minutes a side browns the crust and heats through cooked beef, but chill the shaped croquettes 20-30 minutes first so they hold together when turned.
- Piquante sauceNot given here. The classic version is a brown sauce finished with shallots reduced in vinegar and chopped cornichons; look for it elsewhere in the book or use any sharp brown sauce.
- YieldTwelve croquettes, serving four as a main course with the sauce.
Croquettes are the codified form of a much older domestic habit: turning yesterday's joint into today's dinner without anyone calling it leftovers. French kitchen writing, which had been describing croquettes well before the nineteenth century, eventually gave the practice a name, a standard binding and a place on the menu, and English and American cookbooks took it up in turn. The International Cook Book, assembled by Alexander Filippini, who cooked for years at Delmonico's in New York, is full of this kind of hotel-trained economy written down for household use, which is why the recipe opens by assuming a cold roast is already sitting in the pantry. The sauce piquante served over it is one of the derivative brown sauces of the classical repertoire, sharpened with vinegar and pickled cucumber, and its job here is exactly what its name says: to wake up meat that has already been cooked once.