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Croquette of Salmon, Tartare Sauce
Place a one-and-a-half-pound piece of fresh salmon in a saucepan with half gill white wine, two gills water, one branch parsley, juice of half a sound lemon, a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon white pepper. Cover the pan, let it slowly come to a boil, boil for two minutes, remove to a table and let cool off in the broth. Mix in a saucepan one ounce melted butter with two ounces flour, heat for one minute, then pour in one gill milk, half gill cream, and one gill of the fish broth. Season with two saltspoons salt, a saltspoon cayenne and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Sharply mix with wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, let reduce ten minutes, occasionally mixing meanwhile, add two egg yolks and briskly mix for two minutes. Remove skin and bones from salmon, pick meat into small pieces and add to the sauce, lightly mix, pour preparation into a dish, spread a very little butter over surface, then let thoroughly cool off. Sprinkle a very little flour on a table, divide the fish preparation in twelve equal parts, roll out to cork forms, dip in beaten egg and lightly roll in bread crumbs, place in a frying basket and fry eight minutes, or until a nice golden colour, remove, drain, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, one on top of another, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve with a tartare sauce separately.
A classic hotel-kitchen croquette: poached salmon bound in a very stiff panada, chilled hard, shaped, crumbed and fried. Most of the work is in the chilling, and the one number worth ignoring is the frying time.
- The hinge: chill it solidThe bound salmon mixture must be refrigerated until it is firm all the way through — several hours, or overnight. Warm or soft mixture will split its crumb coat in the fat and empty into the fryer.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon; the cayenne and nutmeg here are seasoning accents, not a heavy hand.
- Frying timeEight minutes is far too long for a filling that is already cooked. At 375F these take 2 to 3 minutes to reach a deep golden colour; any longer and the panada boils, expands and bursts the crust.
- Poaching the salmonTwo minutes at a bare boil and then cooling in the broth is the book's method, and the residual heat carries the fish further, though the quantity of liquid here is small for a 1.5 lb piece; the flesh is cooked again in the boiled sauce and in the fryer. Do not let the liquid gallop or the flesh will tighten and weep white albumin.
- The panadaOne ounce butter to two ounces flour is a deliberately dry roux — this is a binding paste, not a sauce. It should pull away from the pan in a mass after the ten-minute reduction, and the yolks go in off the heat or over very low heat so they thicken without scrambling.
- "Cork forms"Cylinders roughly the size of a wine cork, a little larger — about 2 inches long. Twelve from this quantity gives portions of roughly 2 to 2 1/2 oz each.
- BreadingFlour, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs. A second pass through egg and crumbs is worth the trouble for croquettes fried this hot, and a further 30 minutes in the refrigerator sets the coating.
- Yield and serviceTwelve croquettes, serving four as a main course or six as a first course. The folded napkin is a period presentation and also a practical one — it absorbs frying fat; a rack or paper does the same job.
- Tartare sauceThe book assumes a made-from-scratch mayonnaise base with capers, gherkins and herbs. If you make it with raw yolks, use pasteurised eggs or serve it the same day and keep it cold.
Croquettes belong to the professional French repertoire that ran American hotel and restaurant kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century, and this book \>The International Cook Book ////Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the form solved a real kitchen problem: cooked fish or poultry, bound in a stiff bechamel-type panada, could be portioned in advance, held cold, and fried to order in minutes. The folded napkin and the pyramid of croquettes decorated with parsley are pure service-era styling, the sort of plating a dining-room captain expected to see coming out of the kitchen.