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Clam Croquettes
Open twelve large fresh clams, place in a saucepan with their liquor and a half pint cold water, boil for five minutes, drain and finely chop. Heat one ounce butter in a saucepan, add one medium, finely chopped onion and fry to a light colour, then add two ounces flour; stir well while heating half a minute, then add a half pint of the clam liquor, mix well, boil two minutes and add the clams. Season with a saltspoon cayenne, saltspoon grated nutmeg, teaspoon French mustard and a tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, mix well and slowly cook ten minutes. Add a half teaspoon chopped parsley, juice of quarter of a sound lemon, two tablespoons cream and two egg yolks, thoroughly mix and cook two minutes. Transfer the force into a bowl and let thoroughly cool. Divide it in six equal parts, roll out on a lightly floured table to cork-shaped forms, dip them in beaten egg, then in bread crumbs, place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for ten minutes. Remove, drain well, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A classic croquette panada — a thick, egg-enriched clam béchamel chilled until sliceable, then breaded and fried. Most of what needs updating is the units and the frying time.
- The hinge: chill it hard"Let thoroughly cool" means refrigerated until firm, not merely off the heat — several hours, or overnight. A panada that is even slightly soft will split in the fat and empty itself into the fryer.
- Old measuresA half pint is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the cayenne and nutmeg are each 1/4 teaspoon. Two ounces of flour is about 1/2 cup; one ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons.
- Frying timeTen minutes in deep fat will blacken the crumbs long before the centre is warm — the filling is already fully cooked and only needs heating through. Two to three minutes at 375F gives a brown crust and a hot centre.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around food, roughly 350-375F. Use a thermometer rather than the visual cue.
- French mustardIn this period the term meant a smooth Dijon-style mustard, not the bright yellow American kind. Dijon is the closest substitute.
- Strain the liquorClam liquor carries sand. Pour it through a coffee filter or several layers of muslin before measuring out the cup that goes into the roux, or the croquettes will be gritty.
- ClamsTwelve large clams (quahogs or similar chowder clams) yield somewhere around a cup to a cup and a half of chopped meat, depending on size. A comparable quantity of drained canned chopped clams plus their bottled juice works if you cannot get shellfish in the shell; skip the initial five-minute boil.
- BreadingA single egg-and-crumb coat is thin for something this soft. Flour first, then egg, then crumbs, and chill the breaded croquettes another 30 minutes before frying.
- YieldSix croquettes: three as a main course, six as a first course. The "folded napkin" is a period plating convention for fried food — a paper towel under the croquettes does the same job of absorbing fat.
Croquettes were the great thrift device of late-Victorian and Edwardian professional cookery: a sauce stiff enough to cut, bound with yolks, carrying a small quantity of expensive protein a long way. The technique is French — croquette from croquer, to crunch — and so are the kitchens, which is why the instructions here read like a brigade recipe, down to the frying basket and the napkin-lined dish. Clams gave the American kitchen a cheap and abundant shellfish to put through that French machinery; hard-shell quahogs from the Atlantic coast were far too tough to serve whole in a delicate dish, so chopping them into a panada made practical as well as economic sense. The Worcestershire sauce and French mustard are the giveaway that this is an Anglo-American reading of the form rather than a Parisian one.