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Croquettes of Beef, Horseradish Sauce
Mince very finely all the beef left over from yesterday, place in a bowl and add half the quantity of bread crumbs. Chop very finely one medium, white onion and fry in a saucepan with two teaspoons melted butter six minutes, add to the beef with a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and a bean finely chopped garlic. Season with teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Crack in two raw eggs, add two tablespoons cream, sharply mix with wooden spoon five minutes. Divide preparation in twelve equal parts, lightly roll in flour, giving nice croquette form. Heat in a large frying pan two tablespoons melted lard, place croquettes in pan one beside another, and gently fry four minutes on each side. Drain well, place on a hot dish, pour a horseradish sauce around and serve.
A leftover-beef cake bound with egg and cream, shallow-fried rather than crumbed and deep-fried. The recipe assumes you already know how much beef yesterday's roast left behind, so a few quantities need pinning down.
- How much beefNo weight is given. Twelve croquettes of a sensible size want about 1 lb (450 g) of cooked beef, minced fine, plus roughly half that volume in fresh breadcrumbs — call it 1 to 1 1/2 cups.
- "A bean" of garlicAn old way of describing a piece about the size of a bean, not a whole clove. Use a small clove at most; the horseradish sauce is the loud element here.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. The salt and pepper as written are for the full pound of meat and will read low if your beef was already well seasoned — taste a pinched-off scrap, fried, before shaping the rest.
- The binding is the hingeTwo eggs and two tablespoons cream into cooked, dry meat is a stiff mixture, and the five minutes of sharp beating with a wooden spoon is what makes it hold. Skimp on it and the croquettes break apart in the pan. Chilling the mix 30 minutes before shaping helps further.
- Croquette formThese are floured only, not egg-and-crumbed, and they are fried in two tablespoons of fat in a wide pan. Shape them as flattened ovals or thick patties, not cylinders — a cylinder will not brown evenly in shallow fat.
- FatLard fries these well and browns them cleanly. Clarified butter, beef dripping or a neutral oil all work; whole butter alone will scorch over the eight minutes of total frying.
- TimingFour minutes a side over medium heat is about right for a browned crust. The beef and onion are already cooked, so you are mainly colouring the outside and setting the binder rather than cooking through; the garlic and parsley go in raw.
- The sauceNone is given here; the book expects you to turn to its horseradish sauce. In this period that generally means a white sauce or cream reduction finished with grated fresh horseradish off the heat, since boiling drives off its bite.
- YieldTwelve croquettes, serving four as a main course with potatoes or three if appetites are large.
Croquettes belong to the great nineteenth-century economy of the second-day table: the roast came to the dining room whole one day and returned the next minced, bound and browned, with a sharp sauce to disguise the fact that it had been seen before. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, though this version is floured rather than crumbed and so has only a modest crust. The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York. The horseradish pairing points the dish toward the German and Austrian side of that repertoire, where boiled and roasted beef is commonly served with horseradish in some form.